Silent Hill: Cracks in the Ice
by E.P.O
Summary: (Finally complete.) We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. -The Tempest
1. Boo

Silent Hill: Cracks in the Ice

-

Chapter 1: Boo

It was 10 A.M. on the 9th of January in Hooper Lake City, northeast US. About a week after New Year's eve and two weeks after Christmas, the remains of fireworks lay in the gutter and Christmas trees still adorned a few front yards. The icy streets looked deserted except for a single 33-year-old human stubbornly meandering through the cold, intent on getting to the local bakery to buy her breakfast as she usually did on sunday mornings.

Her full name was Elizabeth Kalember, but her friends (not that she had a whole plethora of those) simply called her Beth. She lived in a cozy little apartment and worked as a shop assistant in My Bestsellers downtown. Her shoulder-length black hair made a sharp contrast to the pale face it framed.

The temperature was mercilessly biting the exposed skin of her face and hands, slowly colouring her fingers red. "_I knew I should have bought those gloves they had on sale the other day_," Beth thought and wandered on, knowing that the familiar warmth of the bakery was just around the corner.

However, once she had turned that corner, Beth saw something that made her forget all about the freshly baked breakfast awaiting her.

A little further down the street, on the other side of the road, a nine-year-old girl stood on the sidewalk and screamed. Although, technically, she wasn't really screaming. The street was quiet except for the sound of Beth's ragged breathing. The girl's mouth was wide open and her face was stretched into an expression of unbearable pain and terror, but she remained completely silent, glaring at Beth.

The latter carefully started walking across the slippery road. A grey fog had now settled over the area and didn't look like it would be lifting anytime soon. "_Where did that come from?_" Beth mused.

"Are you okay?" she asked the girl.

"_Stupid question,_" a wise voice in her mind proclaimed, "_does she look "okay" to you?_"

"Are you having a seizure? Is there some medicine I can get for you?"

The girl refused to reply. She stood still and continued her silent scream. Her hair was brown and her eyes grey, her clothes a little oldfashioned and too large, but nothing unusual.

Beth had made it halfway across the road when the silence was finally broken by the low noise of a vehicle in motion. The noise quickly grew louder, and before the woman in the middle of the road could react, a yellow car burst out of the mist and roughly detached a pair of defenceless feet from the pavement.

A second later, Beth found herself lying motionless and numb with her cheek on the asphalt, snot streaming from her nostrils, blood from her mouth, eyes staring in disbelief at the cab that had hit her as it sped off into the fog. She tried to turn her head a little, to see if the screaming girl was still there, but lost consciousness in the process.

-

Voices.

"Ugh, this looks bad. You think she'll make it?"

"Hurry up and get that gurney over here!"

Ambulance doors slammed shut.

"Lambert Hospital, quick."

"Get the adrenaline ready."

"How's her pulse?"

"Goddammit, get that oxygen right _now_!"

"It's weak, very fast …"

-

When Beth woke up, the cold asphalt she had passed out on was replaced by a comfy, warm hospital bed. "_So I got hit by some cab and had to go to the hospital. Great. What a way to start the new year …_"

She opened her eyes, hoping to see relatives and friends visiting her, but there was no one else in the dim, dusty room. She pulled off the soft sheet and sat up in the bed, glaring slightly disappointed at the wooden table next to her. No flowers, no "get better soon" cards. "_How long have I been here, anyway?_"

She looked down at her patient gown: white with blue dots, falling to her knees. She briefly checked her body for scars, but it all looked normal, with the exception of some nasty bruises on the left hip.

Beth was about to lie back down and go to sleep again, when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a plain white sheet of paper resting on the middle of the wooden table. Didn't seem like anything was written on it. She was pretty sure it hadn't been there before, but then how could it have popped up in the splitsecond she wasn't looking? No, she had to have missed it the first time she scanned the table …

The patient swung her legs over the edge of the bed and her feet reached the grey linoleum floor. The walls and ceiling looked smooth and sterile. Two large windows in the wall behind the table gave her a view of white fog floating around outside like a huge crowd of restless, ghostly spirits. There were two doors – a wide, metallic one opposite the windows and another one, wooden and narrow, in the wall right next to the windows' wall.

Beth stepped up to the table, picked up the paper and turned it around.

**BOO!**

The letters and exclamation marks were all scrawled down in different colours, with a clearly childish handwriting. "Oh, I'm so scared," Beth muttered, chuckling.

That's when the wooden door to her left creaked open.

The woman flinched, her face going very pale, her fingers losing their grip on the paper. She approached the door that had opened inwards a few inches, and somehow, the terrified patient managed to stutter out a quiet "hello?"

The door replied by flying back and slamming into the wall. Beth gasped – she could have sworn that thing nearly fell off its hinges.

Hesitantly, she stepped over the threshold to contemplate the room beyond. No one there. Only one other door, metallic and located in the same wall as the metal door in Beth's room. They probably led to the hallway connecting all the patient's rooms.

In the sharp light of the ceiling's fluorescent tubes, Beth was relieved to see a black string tied to the knob of the door that had opened. The string was hanging between the knob and a bed at the back of the room. A white curtain hung around the bed, so she couldn't see who had been pulling the string, but a little girl could be heard giggling behind the curtain.

Beth smiled. "You really scared me with that door trick, kid. I thought that was a poltergeist or something ..." Beth followed the string across the room and pulled the curtain aside. There was nobody in there. The string lay curled up like some black serpent on the blood-smeared bed.

-

A/N: To be continued, of course. Reviews will be held in high esteem. –E.P.O.


	2. Fear of blood, fear for the flesh

Chapter 2: Fear of blood, fear for the flesh

Part 1: Hospitalization

"Oh SHIT!" Beth blurted out, stumbled back and knocked against a small table, which promptly toppled and spilled its metallic occupants onto the floor. The various surgical instruments clanked against the linoleum.

One of them seemed more than a little appealing to the woman. She instinctively crouched down and snatched the scalpel, so that she could defend herself against whatever was responsible for colouring that bed crimson. The scalpel's blade reflected her brown eyes as she stood and pondered recent events.

"_There's probably an explanation for this. There has to be a totally reasonable explanation for this._ _Think. That door opened because someone in the bed pulled the string. Think. There was no one there to pull the string. Think. Ergo, no one pulled the string. The door therefore opened because ... oh shit. Think._"

The dark, thin serpent curled up on the bed glared at Beth, not willing to give her any clues as to what in the name of logic could have pulled it.

"_A draught! Course, a draught opened the door_," she concluded, vehemently ignoring her senses' telling her that there wasn't the slightest breeze in here.

"_But if some draught blew the door open, that still doesn't explain why the bed is soaked in fresh, warm blood ..._" The whole situation soon filled her with frustration. Her voice bounced off the walls and ceiling like a ping pong ball flying out of control: "None of this-"

Her right foot left the floor ...

"_-_would have happened_-_"

... sailed through the air ...

"_-_if that stupid taxi_-_"

... and kicked the overturned table.

"_-_hadn't fucking hit me!"

The table collided loudly with the wall. Beth winced at the noise. She swiftly checked the table to see if the hospital could sue her for vandalising their property. Fortunately, there weren't any noticeable damages. She carefully put the table back up and laid the instruments on the top. "Whew..."

Beth was about to replace the scalpel when she realized something slightly alarming: Despite the noise she had made (yelling "oh shit", knocking over and kicking that table), no one had come into the room to find out what was going on. This wasn't the most crowded building in the world, but the disquieted patient figured _someone_ had to have heard her under normal circumstances.

"_Then again, these circumstances aren't quite normal_," her mind mumbled. Beth was so shocked at thinking that thought, she nearly jumped. Naturally, it spawned the question "_Well, what the hell kind of circumstances are they?_"

Clutching the scalpel, she made a beeline for the metal door and peeked into the hallway. It was deserted except for a grey cat sitting to her left. Its bright green eyes were fixed on the woman in the doorway.

Beth recalled an odd proverb her grandfather used to quote: _In the night all cats are grey_. She gave a wry smile and asked the animal: "What're you doing in here?"

In lieu of answering this question, the cat got up and wandered down the middle of the corridor. As if hypnotized, Beth followed it past sterile, milky white walls and yellow metal doors. It was almost like a dream, but felt way too real.

"Hello? Anyone here?" she asked. Fluorescent lamps hummed in reply. The dark blue tiles felt icy against her bare feet.

After half a minute of trudging through this apotheosis of all desolate buildings, the cat disappeared from sight by slipping past a half-open door, into a room in the right side of the hallway. **G17 – Comatose Patients Only**, white letters on a black doorplate declared.

Beth stepped into G17 to discover that it was void of both cats and other human beings. The ceiling lamps were broken and blinds covered the windows in the wall at the back, making the room even darker than all the other parts of the hospital she had seen so far. Six beds were lined up against the left and right walls with the long sides facing the entrance wall, each bed equipped with an IV stand and electrocardiograph for showing a patient's pulse. There were no patients around now, though.

A perfect explanation for the situation finally crossed Beth's mind: "_When I got hospitalized, they might have given me some drug that's made me have this funny little dream ... Yeah, that must be it._"

As if voicing its disapproval of the theory about an analgesic-induced hallucination, the electrocardiograph in the far right corner beeped loudly, startling the hell out of Beth in the process.

Part 2: Rainy weather and blind passengers

Kyle Coppola easily drove his cab through the foggy streets of Hooper Lake City. The 45-year-old taxi driver had worked here for nine years, liked his vehicle and knew all the shortcuts. His job was easy and well-paid, albeit not the most varied and exciting occupation in the world.

Contrary to one hidden-camera TV show that had always amused him, his customers rarely talked to him and if they did, they certainly wouldn't reveal any juicy secrets. The conversation topics never got less trivial than sports or the weather.

Apropos of the weather, Kyle felt puzzled by it today. In all the years he had lived in Hooper Lake City, he had never seen it shrouded in this white mist. It was a somewhat surreal sight.

The young couple on the back seat didn't seem too fascinated, though. The wealthy youths were too busy kissing and talking about their forthcoming wedding. In fact, they were on their way to a travel agency to decide on a honeymoon. Kyle envied the couple; it had been a while since he had experienced the same feelings of devotion and love.

He stopped in front of a crossroads, waiting for the green light to replace the red, and looked out the window at a three-storey building with some kind of twining plant growing on the brick walls. An old brass sign above the entrance read **St. Gilliam School -** **Et Facta Est Lux**. "And there was light," he translated under his breath.

The sound of rain falling on asphalt reached his ears, but he couldn't see any rain outside. "_Maybe I should go to the doctor after hours and get my ears checked ..._"

That's when the blood appeared on the car windows. Crimson streaks simply started sliding across the outside of the panes, but instead of respecting Newton's laws, they appeared from the bottoms of the panes and clambered upwards.

"What the FUCK?!" Kyle yelled. His next reaction was quite instinctive, but may seem slightly comical to anyone following his tale: He tried turning on the windshield wipers.

Which didn't work. The wipers merely lay there like black snakes that were too lazy to gobble up the red lizards crawling into their territory. "Come on, goddammit!" Kyle furiously pulled down on the handle behind the steering wheel. The wipers continued to disobey.

The driver attempted to get out of his taxi, but the doors were shut tight and didn't budge. He couldn't even roll down the blood-covered windows.

Then the epiphany hit him: Something had happened to that couple he was driving; he heard nothing but silence from the backseat. His head turned slowly until his widening eyes could scan the corpses behind him.

They were leaned against the windows as if sleeping. Their torsos had numerous stab wounds, but the worst part was their faces. Someone had attached the ends of four thin wires to the eyelids and the other ends to the bottom lips, stretching the eyelids down, blinding the passengers. Nausea invaded Kyle's body.

The man opposite the driver's seat suddenly opened his mouth, sputtered blood and hissed like a hostile animal: "_False. It's ... false." _His eyelids stretched up and down with his lips as he spoke._ "This ... falsehood, this deceit_ ... _so _loathsome"

As the corpse whispered its last syllable, all the panes of the car shattered and glass fragments clinked against the road. Content with this opportunity to escape from his taxi, Kyle twisted himself head first through the nearest window.

Part 3: The Bedridden

Beth stared intently at the electrocardiograph in the far right corner of the room, wondering if the machine would follow up on the single beep she had just heard. The area was flooded by a silence as vast and deep as the ocean itself, a silence in which undercurrents of nervousness and suspense could effortlessly drown anyone in fear.

The ECG finally cleaved this silence by letting out a long, continuous beeping sound, declaring that the absent patient's heart wasn't beating. A bright green line slid vertically across the middle of the black screen like a gross worm slithering through the soil, from left to right.

"But ... what the hell?" Beth aptly remarked.

The worm soon began to wobble towards its left, signifying how the non-existent patient's equally non-existent heart miraculously started to beat again.

_Beep ... _

_Beep ..._

_Beep ..._

The tubes on the ceiling flickered violently. Beth's fingers tightened their grip on the scalpel.

_Beep ... beep ... beep ..._

The vertical green line on the ECG regularly rose upwards from the middle of the screen, conveying the pulse of a normal, relaxed human being.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Rising, diving, rising, diving, faster, faster ...

_beepbeepbeep_

As if tired and exhausted by all that flickering, the tubes fell from the ceiling and crashed down on soft beds and linoleum floor. Beth let out a high-pitched scream and the ECG responded at a ludicrous pace:

_BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP_

The screen turned into a blurry mess of green and black. "_That can't possible be a human pulse, not with that speed ..._"

And then, in the faint light coming from the screen and through the blinds covering the windows, Beth noticed how the sheet on the noisy ECG's bed was bulging up, moving slightly back and forth over the mattress. The sound of fabric ripping apart was audible behind the ECG beeps. The shapes of human fingers moved around under the sheet, soon followed by the outlines of two thin arms.

"_But there couldn't be anyone lying under that sheet – where would the rest of their body be? Unless ..._" Beth gasped as she realized the disturbing truth.

Someone was crawling out of the mattress.

A sickening hand ventured out from the edge of the sheet. Its index and ring fingers had been lopped off, leaving only three fingers on the grey, bony left hand as it reached out, grabbing the air with quick, spasmodic movements. A right hand joined it, then the wrinkled, bruised arms came in view.

The sheet suddenly flew off the bed as the creature's torso lunged upwards, its head lolling back while it moaned at the ceiling like a wolf howling at the moon. Beth could clearly see the gap in the middle of the mattress where the Bedridden had ripped its way out of its claustrophobic confinement. Its naked and skinny upper body protruded from there, the skin oily and grey. Pieces of mattress stuffing still clung to the monster like some kind of boils or mould.

When the thing let itself dive over the edge of the bed, dragging the rest of the body out with it, Beth immediately whirled around, only to discover that the door she had entered through was now closed. She gripped the knob and struggled to get out, but the door wouldn't move one millimetre.

"HELP!"

The ECG and the demon retorted with their incessant beeping and moaning. Beth turned around and her hand flew up to her mouth when she saw how the Bedridden's disturbingly humanlike legs were bent backwards at the knees like a bird's legs. In addition to this downright wrong anatomic feature, a leathery, almost comic model of a bird's beak was strapped to the Bedridden's head like a bizarre modern sex toy. The mouth was concealed behind this long triangular beak, but the eyes were visible above it – haunting, snow-white orbs rolling around in their pitchblack slits. The unusual colours made it look like the photo negative of a normal person with dark eyes.

Beth felt that dry, rotten flavour in her throat, the same taste she always experienced when she was about to retch. Her head felt as light as a feather in an area with much air resistance and her breath quickened. "G-g-go away! Stay away from m-m-me, I've g-got a scalpel!" she ordered the creature, trying to sound as awe-inspiring as a school principle telling a pupil to obey the rules unless they wanted to get expelled.

But Beth wasn't a principle and the Bedridden wasn't some scared little brat getting scolded in her office. Hell, the Bedridden wasn't even human for all she knew.

The thing abruptly jumped up at her, its hands gripping her shoulders and its leathery feet settling on her thighs. Its head lolled back once more, giving shrill birdlike screeches, and Beth observed that the artificial beak above her was hollow. In the midst of the confusion and panic, she caught a disgusting glimpse of something unspeakably deformed glinting in the part of the thing's face where a mouth should be located.

Beth uttered an inarticulate scream of repulsion and panic. Then, before that abomination she had glimpsed could connect with her flesh, she drove the scalpel up through the Bedridden's stomach. The cold blade easily plunged into the tainted flesh and the bony hands loosened their grip on Beth's shoulders. She sprinted away from the freak of nature and headed for the windows in the back of the room.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

The vertical lines on the ECG were traversing the screen a little slower now, while Beth made energetic, yet vain attempts to open the windows. "_I'm on the fourth floor, anyway, so it doesn't matter ..._" She turned around to see that her enemy had collapsed at the door where she'd stabbed it. The thing held its right hand to its stomach, as if to prevent any intestines from falling out.

Beth decided to try hiding instead of running. She slid herself under the bed in the far left corner across from the door and prayed silently that the Bedridden would just disappear.

However, these prayers were hardly heard by any compassionate gods, since the Bedridden soon got up and made its way towards her bed. She could see the decaying hands and feet as it crawled closer like a monkey. Putrid bowels slipped out of the stomach wound and splattered against the floor.

The feet and hands came to a halt in front of the woman's not-so-secret hiding place. For a few seconds, nothing happened and Beth nearly allowed herself to hope the thing would just drop dead there and then. Alas, that wish was not granted and when the grotesque head started squeezing into the space below the bed, Beth's reflexes kicked in and she repeatedly swung the scalpel out in fatal horizontal curves.

_Beep ... beep ... beep ..._

Finally, the freak collapsed and the ECG emitted one continuous beep, a single straight line going across the screen, before turning off. The Bedridden was dead.

Laying under the bed, taking breath, Beth eyed her new best friend: the scalpel. It seemed hard to believe that it had ever been a sterile object.

The moment of rest was ruined by the sudden beeps of the bed's ECG as the bottom of the mattress above Beth bulged out until the material ripped and the familiar grey fingers severed below the nails slipped out like worms from an apple.

Beth shrieked, wriggled out from her former hiding place and stood. Behind her, she could hear the sound of the Bedridden smacking onto the floor below the bed. More of the monsters were emerging from the remaining four beds, numerous ECG beeps assaulting Beth's ears. She tore past the beds and threw herself at the door.

Either someone had unlocked it or she had just hit it with enough force; Beth didn't know the explanation and she didn't care. The important thing was that the door opened and she got out of that hellish room, landing painfully on the hallway tiles, but immediately scrambling to her feet and slamming the door to G17 shut.

---

A/N: Tune in next week ... -E.P.O.


	3. Elevator Encounters

Chapter 3: Elevator Encounters

_Nymph, n. _

_1. (Class. Myth.) A goddess of the mountains, forests, meadows, or waters. _

_2. Hence: A lovely young girl; a maiden; a damsel._

_3. (Zo"ol.) The pupa of an insect; a chrysalis._

On the fourth floor of Lambert Hospital, Hooper Lake City, the only sounds were some muffled moans coming from room G17 and bare feet slapping down on cold tiles as Beth ran down the corridor, wearing a bloodstained gown and clutching a scalpel. One could say she looked as insane as the world she was trapped in.

Beth wondered how it had developed into this. How she had been walking down the street to get her breakfast at the bakery, and then found herself in a hospital with such aberrations crawling out of the beds. Once more, she recalled that odd proverb her grandfather liked: _In the night all cats are grey_. "_Well, I sure am one ordinary, innocent little cat. So what the hell am I doing up in the middle of the night?_" Beth mused.

She finally reached the end of the hallway and tried the door which should open into the stairwell, but the lock was broken. "Dammit." She pressed the button next to the elevator. The steel doors slid apart and a narrow interior with wooden panels and a mirror on the back wall was revealed. She stepped inside, pressing the button for the first floor, and the doors closed noiselessly. The lift descended through its shaft. Beth sighed. She didn't like taking an elevator alone; they had always given her the vague, but nagging feeling that the whole building would blow up if she pressed the wrong button.

The noise of the mirror cracking behind her caused Beth to flinch and whirl around, coming face to face with the same nine-year-old girl who had been screaming silently on that foggy street. She was standing below the mirror, bright grey eyes glaring up at the lift's other passenger between strands of brown hair. "Where did you come from?" Beth blurted out.

"I ... don't know." The girl bowed her head, almost like a gesture of embarrassment. "I don't know ..."

Beth frowned. She was sure the elevator had been empty when she entered it. "Did you just break that mirror?"

The girl nodded.

"Why?" Beth asked out of curiosity.

"I got angry." The girl's voice sounded thick. "It's cold in here." Her hands floated up slowly, almost like they were moving through water, until they covered her face.

"What's wrong?"

"I. Don't ... know. Oh God, I'm freezing ..."

The elevator stopped and Beth heard the doors slide open behind her. She reached out to put her hand on the girl's shoulder, saying "Just calm down. Tell me what's ---" But there, her soothing sentence came to an abrupt halt. When she was about to touch the child's shoulder, a migraine crushed her skull and drilled into her brain, filling her head with agony in the blink of an eye.

Beth uttered a feeble yelp and collapsed to the floor of the elevator. In the midst of the pain, she had a short, clear vision of a small old-looking bicycle lying on dark paving stones. Someone had cut the tyres open and ripped the chain off, rendering the bike utterly useless as a means of transport. Snowflakes fell on the vandalised cycle while one of the tyres still spun around, as if the culprits had just left the scene ...

And then, it was over, Beth was back in Lambert Hospital and the girl was gone. The lift had stopped at the first floor lobby, a bright hall with four massive square pillars. Whenever Beth had visited this hospital, the lobby had been crowded and busy. Today, it was abandoned and so silent you could almost hear the dust conquering the formerly impregnable surfaces of the benches, chairs and reception desk.

The woman stepped out of the elevator and gazed with profound fascination at the lobby's emptiness. The doors to the parking lot outside were located opposite the elevator and Beth walked straight through the lobby towards them. What had happened to the little girl, why this place appeared so desolate and what those monsters in room G17 were, she didn't know and would hopefully never know. But one thing was for sure: She wanted to get out of this building, and she wanted to get out right now.

When Beth was halfway through the lobby, the door to the parking lot swung open and a pale man in his mid-forties burst into the hall. His eyes widened when he noticed there was only a single other human being in here; they widened even more when he noticed this person was wearing a bloody gown and holding an equally gory scalpel. The door suddenly slammed behind him, and this time, Beth didn't bother telling herself it was the work of a powerful draught. She walked right past the stranger and struggled with the door, but to no avail. "Goddammit ..."

"Y-you can't open it?" the man said.

"Yeah." Beth turned around to face him. "Damn thing won't budge."

The man rolled his eyes. "You've gotta be kidding me. Let me try." He pulled the handles, but came to the same conclusion as Beth. "What the hell? Someone locked it? And ... what happened to you?"

"I could ask you the same question," Beth said, gesturing to the cuts and scrapes on the man's chest and limbs.

"I got in a car accident. Had to crawl through a broken window to get outta that mess. My name's Kyle Coppola, I'm a cab driver."

"Cab driver?!"

"What's the matter? You look sorta shocked."

"It's just that ... Well, I guess it wasn't necessarily you, but some cab hit me the other day and that's why I had to go to the hospital."

"Seems like we're both having a bad start on the new year, huh?" Kyle said; it was the beginning of January. Beth gave a wry smile. "Yeah, you could say that."

"Hey, you still haven't told me why you've got all that blood on you. And what's with the scalpel?" Kyle said.

Beth sighed and walked up to the reception desk. "It's hard to explain." A folded-up quadratic paper was lying on it. She started folding it out. "Would you think I've gone insane if I said that I've ..." It was a complete map of the hospital. "... been attacked by something ..." She rummaged through her vocabulary to find a formulation that fit the Bedridden. "... something neither human nor animal? If I've encountered something that just doesn't belong in this world?"

"Something like ... blood that falls upwards?" Kyle asked.

"...The fuck?!"

Kyle winced at this response. However, it wasn't addressed to him, for the woman had just noticed the words "**First Recollection**" scrawled down on room G17 in the hospital map. Beth showed it to Kyle. "What does that mean?"

"How should I know?" Kyle shrugged. "But there's more here ..." He pointed to room D5 on the third floor. "**Second Recollection**" was scribbled across it in childish handwriting, and "**EXIT**" across the locked lobby doors on the first floor. At the top of the paper, capital letters proclaimed that "**WHEN THE FIRST THREE RECOLLECTIONS ARE FULFILLED, THE EXIT WILL OPEN**".

Beth sighed and slumped down on a bench at the side of one of the pillars. "So we have to go to that room on the third floor now?"

"According to whoever wrote on the map, yeah. Or we could just ..." Kyle tried the doors again. Still shut tight. "... try another way out." There were two large windows on either side of the doors. Kyle picked up one of the lobby chairs. "I don't think that's gonna work," Beth softly advised.

The chair whizzed through the air and hit the window with a dull thud. The clinking noise of glass breaking was disappointingly absent. The chair fell to the floor with a broken leg, while the pane remained intact. "Shit!" Kyle leaned his palms against the window and glared out at the abandoned parking lot. "Where is everybody, anyway?"

Beth shrugged. "Uh, could I borrow your socks? My feet are killing me."

Kyle shook his head. "Not until you tell me what's going on here."

"I have no idea, okay? Let's just try to get outta here." Beth rose from the bench and started walking towards the elevator. Maybe she could snatch some footwear from the locker rooms on the third floor. "You gonna come with me?" she asked Kyle, hoping she wouldn't have to face this "second recollection" on her own.

"Of course. Who would want to be alone in a place like this?" Kyle said and followed Beth into the elevator, pressing the third floor button. "The mirror's cracked," he remarked. Beth nodded, not telling Kyle about the little girl who had appeared from and disappeared into thin air. "_He just wouldn't believe me ..._"

The doors opened and the duo found themselves at the corner of a deserted, dimly lit corridor. A solitary poster on the wall read "**Involuntary urination? Do something about it!**"

They entered the nurse's locker room and Beth donned a pair of grey wool socks and jogging shoes from one of the lockers. They felt a little too large, but she could live with that. Beth led the way further down the corridor to room D5's wide metallic door. Beyond it, the "second recollection" awaited them. She hesitantly wrapped her fingers around the handle and pulled ...

Locked.

"Just grea---" Beth didn't have time to utter the sarcastic response before gasping as something furry stroked her leg. Her eyes raced down to meet those of the grey cat from the fourth floor. "You again ..." The animal had a collar on this time. Beth was sure it hadn't been there when she encountered it in the hallway upstairs. "Huh? What's a cat doing here?" Kyle said. Looking at it gave him a strong feeling of déjà vu and a slight headache. Where on earth could he have seen it before? That grey fur, the wide green eyes – all so familiar somehow ...

"Looks like it's brought us a little something." Beth crouched down and removed the brown leather collar, holding it up so they could both see the silvery key hanging from it and what was carved there: **D5 2nd**. While Beth stood and unlocked D5's door, the cat trudged away and slipped into another room two doors farther down the hallway. Kyle and Beth ignored it and opened the door.

The room was far from sterile. In fact, the one word describing it perfectly would be _organic_. The floor was covered by some kind of pulsating flesh, the grey linoleum concealed by this reddish, vibrating mass. The flesh continued growing on the walls and had nearly spread across the entire ceiling, from which rudimentary limbs hung motionless like a travesty of stalactites in this moist cavern that was once a hospital room. A muscular human leg with veins strung out between the shin and thigh, bending the knee 90 degrees. An adult's arm with paperthin fingers as short as those of an infant. An overweight man's belly with something trying to break free through the navel ... no wait, that wasn't a belly. It was more like a ... Beth strained her eyes to make out the round thing growing on the far corner of the ceiling.

A pupa. An insect's pupa.

Beth and Kyle knew they had to get far away right now, and yet they felt rooted to the spot, fascinated by the oversize chrysalis. It bulged out in the middle and started to bounce up and down while a muffled voice laughed from within. Human fingers ripped through the gooey cocoon surface and a pus-smeared woman's face appeared in the opening, cackling psychotically. The pupa finally released its weak grip on the ceiling and fell to the floor with a wet smack.

This sound was probably what tore Beth out of her state of repulsed fascination and back to reality (or at least the reality of this highly unreal situation). She instantaneously realized they would either make their escape now or have their lives snuffed out by the unearthly inhabitant of the chrysalis. She turned to Kyle, who was still in utter shock, face pale and eyes wide with disbelief.

"RUN!"

It took a few seconds for Kyle's mind to recognize and understand the word. Then he slammed D5's door and sprinted down the hallway after Beth. "Head for the elevator!" the latter shouted, knowing they needed the safety of the lift's thick steel doors. She could see another little girl standing in there, smiling, while the elevator doors slowly closed.

Behind them, the Nymph uttered a deafening roar as it flung itself at D5's door and burst into the hallway, the entire female torso now protruding, the arms swiftly dragging the body and pupa towards its prey, leaving only a trail of yellowish matter behind. Its lips parted to reveal numerous lines of decaying teeth and its jaws dislocated with an audible 'crack' to open the mouth further. An acidulous stench filled the third floor and forced its way into Beth and Kyle's nostrils as they entered the elevator two seconds before the doors closed. The little girl's enigmatic smile broadened and the Nymph skid to a halt, letting out a frustrated scream, sensing its prey would escape this time.

The elevator started ascending. "What ... the hell ... was that?" Kyle said, scant of breath. "A Nymph," the little girl replied. Kyle didn't react. He just stared at his exhausted visage in the cracked mirror.

The girl stood in the corner opposite Kyle. She was a bit reminiscent of the girl who had broken the mirror, but she looked 14 years old, had longer brown hair and dark blue eyes instead of bright grey. Beth crouched down to reach the girl's eye level and asked: "What's your name?"

"Louise."

"Okay, Louise. We've gotta get out of here, the three of us. I don't know what happened or why, but it's dangerous here."

"I know. You'll get outta here."

"Uh, Beth? Who are you talking to?" Kyle asked, vaguely worried about Beth's mental health. "And what's taking this elevator so long?"

Beth ignored the man and assured Louise: "No, _we'll_ get outta here. Together."

"Don't worry about me," the girl said, still smiling. "I'm safe. The monsters won't hurt me. They can't."

"But ... why?" Beth blurted out.

"Hey, cut that out. There's no one there. You're not going crazy, are you?" Kyle frowned.

"He can't see me," Louise said before Beth replied to Kyle's anxious question. "I don't want him to see me, so he doesn't see me. I can control all that ... but I need your help, Beth."

The doors slid aside, the lift stopped on the fourth floor. "I'll tell you more some other time. Right now, you should meet Dean Frost," the kid advised and stepped out of the lift. "You'll find him in room F2, south wing." She started walking down the corridor.

"Wait!" Beth was about to give chase when the elevator doors closed in the blink of an eye and she was trapped inside with Kyle. After a few seconds, the doors slowly separated again and Beth hurried into the hallway, but Louise was nowhere to be seen. "Oh, for crying out loud ..." She called out the girl's name a couple of times.

"Who's Louise?" Kyle asked, stepping out of the lift behind her. Beth spun around: "You mean you really couldn't see her?! Oh hell ..." As an excuse to refrain from meeting Kyle's distrustful glance, Beth studied the map. Louise had mentioned a Mr. Dean Frost in room F2, south wing.

According to the map, that wing was for patients with "**serious illnesses of mental nature**."

---

A/N: Thanks for all those reviews. I have done some sketches and will upload them as soon as I get a scanner – probably in december or january. Until then, I must save the scant cash I have for christmas presents. And yes, I know creatures crawling out of oversize pupae is a cliché in this genre, but I thought it would fit the story and Silent Hill's theme of rebirth. Tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	4. Revolt of the Otherworld

Chapter 4: Revolt of the Otherworld

In the women's room on the third floor of Lambert Hospital, a 21 years old redhaired woman named Shelley Tate unlocked the door and stepped out of the toilet stall, making a beeline for the sinks to wash her hands and splash her face with cold water. The mirrors above the sink displayed her thin, pale appearance with merciless accuracy, but at least she looked better than three years ago when she had been admitted to the hospital.

Shelley reached her wet hands out below the drying machine. Usually, it would automatically start blowing warm air down, but it seemed to be out of order today. Shelley sighed and tried drying her hands on her blue jeans instead.

She walked up to the wooden door to the hallway and opened it. A disgusting, sourish smell immediately wafted in from the corridor. Shocked and repulsed, Shelley reeled back as if a professional boxer had just punched her face. This _was_ a hospital and hence, the air never exactly carried a heavenly fragrance, but the air from the hallway was far worse than any stench Shelley's nose had ever had the displeasure of encountering before. It smelled like the apotheosis of all things stale and tainted.

Shelley lifted her dark brown sweater's collar to cover her nostrils. The fabric's smell soon replaced most of the stench, but a vague ghost of the hallway's acidulous reek remained, like a stranger that you can always see shadowing you in the corner of your eye.

Pressing the fabric to her nostrils, Shelley approached the doorway and peeked into the corridor, curious about the reason for the strong smell. The first thing she noticed was a trail of yellowish pus on the floor. It stretched from room D5's half-open door and down to the elevator where it stopped at a gooey, reddish heap lying in front of the lift doors. "Eeew, what is that?" Shelley muttered. "Some kind of ... pupa?"

The heap suddenly stirred and groaned as if waking up with one hell of a hangover. Shelley was starting to make out the characteristics of a human body inside the pupa, a bald female body. The head slowly turned around and two piercing eyes smothered in the yellowish matter locked onto Shelley's bright blue orbs. The creature's lips ripped apart with a horrible dry sound as if they had been glued together. Razorsharp teeth appeared from behind these shrivelled lips and the Nymph uttered a sadistic laughter, as if it were aware of and delighted at how this moment would haunt Shelley Tate's mind for the rest of her life.

Shelley wordlessly closed the door and leaned her back against it, staring at the women's room she had grown so familiar with during her three years living in the hospital. Now, she felt like she had just entered this place. It was a strange, alien area she would never get used to.

---

Dean Frost lay curled up in the corner of room F2, chin resting on his knees above his folded hands. The room was cold, grey and dusty, with the softness of those white walls saving him from the things Doctor wanted him to do once in a while.

How long had he been lying here? He couldn't remember if it had been minutes or hours. He wasn't even sure if he was lying down. Maybe that wall his feet were pressed against was the real floor and he was standing up, his side leaned against the corner wall. Time and gravity were no longer things he could rely on, they were mysteries. Strange, inscrutable mysteries.

From his position, he could keep an eye on the door to the hallway and fog swirling outside the solitary narrow window just below the ceiling. It was important that he kept watching those two areas of the room, since they were the most obvious ways for the town to get inside and take him away, like it had taken _her _away when he was a little kid.

But the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that it wasn't the town that was his enemy. The town was a _façade_ (that was a fancy word Doctor used sometimes, but Dean wasn't sure what it meant), a façade hiding the real enemy – an enemy so powerful and ancient he would surely lose his mind if he tried to comprehend its true nature. Mister had said it, too – he had stated there was something else than the town, but he didn't want to think about what. Dean agreed with Mister on that.

Whatever this enemy behind the town could be called, it was here. That was an undeniable fact, and he had realized it the moment he heard those noises from the north wing. Metallic crashes and thuds, moans and birdlike screeches, a woman screaming "HELP!"

He had been sitting across the room, drawing a portrait of _her_. Doctor had been critisizing his work as usual, making incessant remarks about how ridiculously wrong the proportions looked and asking Dean why he even bothered when he could neither draw nor even remember _her_ face. Mister had been far more encouraging, praising Dean's "impressive drawing skills", asking Doctor if he could do a better job himself. Doctor had answered "no, I could not, but that is beside the point" and was about to start a monologue on the unrealistic appearance of _her_ lips in this doodling mess that could hardly even be called a sketch. But that's when the noises had begun and both Doctor and Mister had stopped discussing inside Dean's head, falling silent to listen to the ghostly moans. Two simple words had flashed through Dean's mind:

"_SILENT HILL"_

It was here. The power from the town where he had grown up and lost _her_. Here.

He had forgotten all about the drawing and the opinions of Doctor and Mister, dropping his crayon and rushing back to this corner where he was now laying still and curled up like a dead foetus. Strands of dark blonde hair fell into his brown eyes that raced back and forth between the window and the narrow pane of thick glass in the door.

"Well, it is good that you are keeping watch, but what will you do if the power does come in to take you away?" Doctor asked. He was whispering, afraid something out there might hear him if he talked too loud. Dean understood that something really was wrong if even Doctor felt scared. "You need a weapon, Mr. Frost."

"Nah, you can just punch that 'power' in the stomach, right Dean?" Mister suggested and tried to sound cheery and optimistic as usual, but fear had clearly crept into his voice as well.

---

"Are you sure there was someone in that elevator?" Kyle asked for what felt like the millionth time while they wandered towards the south wing. "Maybe they gave you some drug that gives you hallucinations like that?"

"I'm pretty damn sure what I've seen with my own eyes," Beth said.

"But I didn't see anything," Kyle reitterated. "You must've been hallucinating, it's the only explanation ..."

Beth spun around. "Oh yeah? Well, since you're so good at making up "explanations", why don't you explain just what the hell that _thing_ in room D5 was?"

"Err ..."

"Are you gonna blame that on drugs, too? Because then the _both_ of us would have to be pretty fucking stoned. And we aren't. That thing was _real_, Kyle. And so was the girl in the lift. You can believe that or not, but I'm gonna go to the room she mentioned if that's what I have to do to get the fuck outta here." Beth pivoted and proceeded down the corridor.

"Beth, I – I'm sorry," Kyle offered and followed her towards the dark green double doors to the mental illness wing at the end of the milky-white hallway. "I'm just so confused about all this. It doesn't make sense," he said. Beth nodded imperceptibly and reached out for the handles of the metallic doors.

The moment she pushed the doors open, an alarm went off. It sounded shrill and rusty, a continous screeching aural torment. Beth's hands instinctively flew up to cover her ears.

On the other side of the doors, the grey cat sat on the middle of the linoleum floor to bid her welcome to the west wing. It got up and started running down the hallway. Beth gave chase. Behind her, Kyle groaned and slumped down to his knees. "Agh, my head ... That damn cat ... I hate that cat."

Beth chose to ignore him and follow the cat, which was leaving small red footprints on the grey floor. The animal turned around a corner and disappeared from the woman's range of vision. The alarm grew louder and started to sound like air raid sirens. Beth turned the corner and saw that there was now someone else running next to the cat – the girl who had broken the mirror in the elevator.

The girl whirled around, her mouth wide open, but not the slightest sound coming out. Another silent scream of terror. The cat stopped, petrified. It was like they had been running away from some unspeakable abomination just behind Beth, but now they had realized there was no escape and simply surrendered. Beth turned around to see just what they had all tried to flee from, but before she could catch a glimpse of it, she felt something cold slam into her back and lost consciousness.

---

Kyle awoke lying on a warm, soft surface. It felt like soaked foam rubber. However, as his eyelids rose, he discovered it was the same pulsating flesh that had occupied the room where they found the Nymph. Little rivers of blood and pus flowed in an intricate labyrinth through the wrinkles in the flesh. He could feel it trickle against his hands and cheek. It was like lying on the tongue of a slavering giant.

"Urgh, fuck!" Kyle struggled to get up, but the floor didn't want to let go. It would seem it had grown onto the front of his body while he had been unconscious. It clung to him and slowly grew along the sides of his limbs towards his back, trying to bury him inside.

With a final exertion, Kyle pushed himself out from the grip of what used to be hard, cold linoleum. The man scrambled to his feet, silently promising to himself that he'd never fall down on that "floor" again.

Kyle could recall that Beth had opened those doors to the south wing and those weird air raid sirens had sounded. Then he had seen the cat and gotten a déjà vu feeling again (not one of those vague feelings people would tell exaggerated stories about at parties, a _real_ déjà vu), along with a violent headache. He had thought something like "that damn cat", but he wasn't sure if that had been a mere thought or if he had said it out loud. Well, it didn't matter. He had just seen the cat, gotten a headache and passed out, waking up in this twisted version of the hospital corridor.

He scanned the hallway and realized that the light source from the ceiling was, in lieu of the fluorescent tubes from before, thick white candles hanging from the ceiling, their orange flames licking downwards, defying the laws of gravity like the blood that had trickled up across the taxi windows.

The flesh from the Nymph's room had spread out and infested the rest of the building. It covered every single square millimetre of the floor, walls and ceiling. A few legs and torsos hung out here and there. Some parts of the flesh bulged out in the familiar shapes of various human bodies, from skinny midgets to tall beheaded men, obese women, little girls, all hidden inside the flesh – but the sickening telltale bulges remained, clearly visible in the light from the upside-down candles. Humans trapped in these organic walls like insects in resin, preserved for eternity.

"Oh ... oh hell," Kyle whispered, fighting the urge to vomit. He held his hands out around his eyes like binoculars, trying to prevent himself from seeing the horrors around him and focus on the end of the hallway, but he could still hear miserable muffled sobbing and moans all around him.

He didn't even know where he was headed, which way would lead to the exit or if there really was any exit at all. Not long ago, he had been a taxi driver who knew the city he was driving in and the shortest route to his destination. Now he was a lost man staggering around in a strange realm, with no idea how he was supposed to get out. And that, without a doubt, is truly Hell.

---

The moment Shelley heard the air raid sirens, the drying machine fell off the wall. Shelley let out a scream of shock as the box clanked against the floor tiles. The young woman's hands that had been covering her nose with her sweater let go of the fabric and settled over her ears to muffle out the strident noise of the sirens and her own shriek.

And from the part of the wall where the drying machine fell off, blood spurted out. As if the room was a living body and the drying machine was a limb that had been cut off, thick blood sprayed through the air and spattered the black and white tiles with red puddles. Shelley considered grabbing that machine from the floor and replacing it on the wall to stop the scarlet torrent, but she probably wasn't strong enough. All she could do was to stand at the door and stare horrified at what was happening to the room.

The walls turned grimy, the air became dank and acrid. The overhead lamps vanished into thin air and were replaced by lit stearin candles hanging upside down. The sinks and toilets overflowed with blood that poured down like lava from volcanos. The puddles on the floor joined into one big lake and Shelley felt the warm liquid trickle into her shoes and drench her socks.

The stalls to her right melted together and transformed into one big metallic cage. The rusty bars were nailed together sloppily in a high rectangular shape along the right wall. And in the middle of this cage, a little old-looking blue bicycle was displayed with a mannequin sitting on it – or rather, slumped over it. It was a clammy child-sized mannequin with its head resting on the handlebars and limp legs hanging next to the pedals. A brown wig was placed on the head.

But opposite the cage, to Shelley's left, the wide mirror above the sinks was completely unaffected. It still showed a reflection of the restroom Shelley was used to – a clean, bright room void of this atrocious scenery. She took a few hesitant steps up to the mirror. For some reason, she felt afraid the reflection wouldn't include her own body. But that fear proved to be pointless, for her reflection was right there in the normal restroom, staring back at her with wide, nervous eyes. Shelley reached out and touched the glass with her fingertips, wishing she could slide through to the normal, familiar world on the other side. "What is this place?" she muttered.

In the reflection, there was a little girl with brown hair standing across the room behind Shelley. The latter turned around to find the same girl standing at the same spot in the nightmarish version of the room. The child was inside the cage next to the bicycle. The mannequin had disappeared – it was almost as if it had just done a Pinocchio, turned into a real human and gotten off the bike. However, this little girl didn't seem too human either. There was something disquieting about the cold, scrutinizing way she gazed at Shelley through the rusty bars.

She softly answered the woman's question: "It's called the Otherworld. That's what that guy said ... The guy Louise talked with."

Shelley was about to ask the girl what the hell the "Otherworld" was, when the mirror behind her shattered and a large greasy hand shot out of the gap, gripping her neck.

---

On the fourth floor, Beth stood in front of the door to room F2. After waking up alone in the corridor where she had fallen unconscious earlier, she was dumbfounded by the hellish redecoration it had gone through and her memories of what had occurred just before she lost consciousness. Luckily, she didn't need to wander far in these unsettling surroundings before finding room F2. According to Louise, there was a mr. Dean Frost in here – in the wing for mental patients. Beth had no idea who and how dangerous he could be, but as long as he was a human being, she'd be relieved to have him around. She couldn't stand being on her own in this place.

Beth took a deep breath and opened the door.

---

A/N: Argh, so many cliffhangers. Remenants: Actually, I haven't read the comics. Everyone seems to hate them, anyway. I'll try to keep Louise's character from getting 'gawd awful' ...Tune in next week, –E.P.O.


	5. Mental Cases

A/N: Listened to Massive Attack's "Black Milk" while writing part 1, and "Don't Cry" from the SH1 soundtrack while writing part 2.

Chapter 5: Mental Cases

Part 1: Dean Frost

A smell of old sweat and dust pervaded the room, which was about the size of a normal patient's room, though completely void of any hospital equipment or furniture. A single tube on the ceiling was supposed to light up the empty space between the white walls, but it wasn't working. The only light came from the doorway, streaming in around Beth's figure as she stood on the threshold and pushed the door wide open.

There was a window high up on the left wall, a black night sky waiting outside. But with the memory of Kyle's fruitless attempt to smash the lobby windows still fresh in her mind, Beth decided she would have to find another escape route.

Light poured in from the hallway and formed a long, bright yellow rectangle on the middle of the previously darkened floor. A paper and four crayons lay at the far edge of this rectangle. Beth left the threshold and walked up to the illuminated drawing. It depicted the face of a caucasian blonde in her forties or fifties. The features were quite well drawn, especially the blue eyes and broad smile, although the artist could have done a better job with proportions and shadows. Considering that the crayons only consisted of the three primary colours and a thin black one, Beth was impressed with the colouring on the portrait. Whoever made it certainly had a talent for mixing colours. A simple title was written with tiny black letters in the upper corner: "**SHE**".

Beth's fascination for the portrait was obliterated as a frightened whimper seeped out from the far right corner of the room, startling her. Her eyes left those of the blonde in the drawing and focused on the dark corner. She hadn't noticed anything there when she first entered the room, but now she could make out a motionless human shape curled up in the shadows.

"Hello?"

The figure's head tilted back and the eyes rolled up to look at Beth. "You're ... You're not from the town?"

"What town?"

The figure hesitated for a while, afraid to utter the simple trisyllabic answer: "Silent Hill."

Beth frowned. What did that have to do with anything? Although she'd never actually been there, she had heard about the town. It seemed like a nice place for a vacation, an ordinary rural town located at the beautiful Toluca Lake in northern New England. "No, I'm not from Silent Hill," she replied. "Why do you want to know that? And who are you, anyway?"

The figure left its fetal position and stood. "My name's Dean Frost."

"You're a patient here?"

"Uhm ... yeah."

"Did you draw this?" Beth asked, holding up the portrait.

"Gimme that!" Dean lunged out from the corner and into the light. Beth could now clearly see the details of his visage. He was a pale 29-year-old with brown eyes and the same hair-colour as the lady in the drawing. He wore a male patient's uniform consisting of a green t-shirt and matching trousers, with only a pair of black socks on his feet. He grabbed the portrait and withdrew to the shadows once more.

"Take it easy," Beth said, surprised at the rabid way Dean had snatched his work back. "I wasn't going to rip it up or anything. It's pretty good, actually."

"I told you that kid has talent, Doc," Mister said.

"Oh, shut up." Doctor hated being called Doc. "That woman probably does not know a thing about good art."

"Thanks," Dean said, ignoring Doctor's surly remark about Beth. "But it's not finished yet."

"Who is that woman?" Beth asked, gesturing to the paper.

"Do _not_ tell her!" Doctor advised.

"Why not?" Mister asked.

"It is none of her business. She should not have seen that paper in the first place. In fact, you should not even have drawn it at all, Mr. Frost," Doctor said.

"It's _her_ ... my mother. I haven't seen her for 19 years, so I can't really remember her face," Dean lied. He could remember her face perfectly, right down to the smallest mole and the slightest wrinkle. He just didn't want to remember it – Doctor said it was unhealthy to let things like that stay in your memory-store for so long. They would eventually rot like old food and spoil your mind.

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"I'm Elizabeth Kalember, but just call me Beth. Do you know what's happened here? The whole building's deserted, there are these gross creatures out there ... And the hallways look so freaky all of a sudden. I've never seen anything like it in my whole life."

"It's Silent Hill's power ... It must've come here for some reason," Dean mused.

"What do you mean? 'Silent Hill's power'? It's just an old resort town. What does that have to do with this ... this _nightmare_?" Beth shuddered as she cocked an eye at the flesh growing on the hallway outside.

"I don't understand it either, but something's going on in Silent Hill. There's a cult there ... worshipping some weird gods."

"_A cult? Weird gods?! No wonder this guy's in the mental wing,_" Beth thought.

"She does not believe you," Doctor stated. "Of course she does not believe you, but I think she will learn."

"Anyway, I have no idea how we're gonna get out of here," Beth admitted. "The lobby doors are locked, the windows won't break ..."

Mister suddenly remembered something: "Tell her about that room."

"Well ... I heard there's a room where they keep all the keys. I think it's called the main office. I don't know where it is, but maybe we should go there," Dean offered.

Beth studied the map and found two main offices, one in this wing, just a couple of corridors away, and one in the second floor's north wing. "Okay, there's one nearby. Let's go." She started for the doorway, noticing that the hallway's flesh had already crossed the threshold and was slowly invading room F2.

Dean was about to follow when Mister burst out: "The crayons!"

"Wait!"

Beth turned around to find Dean retrieving the four crayons from the floor. He then stood and walked up to the doorway, clutching the crayons in his left hand and the portrait in the other. His jaw dropped as he saw the corridor outside. He didn't say anything, but Mister and Doctor undoubtedly started a vehement discussion.

Part 2: Mirrored Delusion

The hand tightened around Shelley's neck like a relentless vice. It felt flabby and sleek, smothered in warm grease. It became harder and harder for the air to travel down her throat and reach her lungs. She didn't dare to use any of the precious oxygen to scream. Instead, she silently squirmed to get out of the greasy hand's grip, but to no avail. The fingers felt far from normal – all four except the thumb had grown together. It reminded Shelley of a winter-glove, but in this case, the skin formed the glove and the bones and flesh made up the fingers inside. Although she wasn't sure the thing had bones.

In the cage with the bicycle, the brown-haired girl squeezed through the vertical bars and walked up to the door to the hallway.

"Help ... me," Shelley whispered, tears in her eyes.

"I can't," the girl said, opened the door and stepped out of sight.

Shelley heard fragments of glass clatter into the sink as the gap in the mirror broadened and the owner of the gross hand emerged behind her, uttering a continous guttural snarl reminiscent of a lion. A wide, slobber-covered tongue started to slide slowly across her neck.

Shelley let out that high-pitched scream she had repressed for so long and her hands finally slipped into her jeans' pockets, looking for a weapon. They only found some gum and two quarter dollars. The frantic hands left the pockets and dove into the sink behind her, where the right one picked up the first piece of the mirror it could find. She raised the fragment and jabbed it back, hoping she'd hit the creature ...

And she did. The glass pierced oily skin and plunged into a soft, lumpy mass that Shelley assumed was the left shoulder. A pathetic squeal echoed through the room and the hand loosened its grip enough for the oxygen to pour into Shelley's lungs again as she took a few running steps away from the counter and whirled around to see her enemy.

It might once have been a human, but now it was nothing more than a bestial monstrosity, a glistening lump of fat relentlessly dragging itself out from the mirror. The obese body was smothered in weird liquids and oily substances, the eyelids stuck shut under this gooey layer. The mouth was freakishly oversized, stretching up past the part of the face where the nose should have been, wide open in an exaggerated yawn. Incredibly skew, dark yellow teeth lined the circumference of the mouth. The disgusting tongue dangled out between them, flapping around fiercely as if searching for the human neck it had just caressed. Gill-like slits adorned the cheeks and neck. The belly was enormous, and yet the ribs were clearly visible against the skin. Like an extention of the torso, the thighs had grown together all the way down to the knees, leaving only the shins to walk with.

Shelley stood petrified, staring at the Devourer as it wriggled its merged thighs through the black hole in the mirror and slid down across the counter, landing on the blood-covered floor, clumsily scrambling to its feet. The fragment of glass was still buried two inches into its shoulder. The Devourer merely grabbed the shard and pulled it right out. But instead of attacking Shelley with it, it crammed the glass into its mouth, chewed voraciously and swallowed.

Shelley dashed for the hallway, but the creature threw itself at the door before she could reach it, blocking the exit completely. The woman's eyes darted around like butterflies in jars, looking for another exit. She briefly considered going through the black gap in the mirror, but if that monster had come from the other side, who knows what horrors she'd find in there?

The Devourer started sauntering towards her in all its crookbacked obesity, its mouth gnawing blindly at the stale air. Shelley pivoted, ran up to the bicycle's cage and squeezed through the bars. The Devourer was obviously unable to go between any of the bars, so maybe if she just stayed here and didn't provoke it, the monster would go away ...

But no. It simply staggered up to the cage on its ludicrously short legs and leaned on the bars, causing the entire structure to creak and sway. The slaver-dripping tongue waggled like a dog's tail between two of the bars. Tears flowed from Shelley's eyes as she remembered the story about the big bad wolf trying to get into the house of the three little pigs. "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf," she murmured unmelodiously, "big bad wolf, big bad wolf. Who's afraid of the big bad wolf. Tra la la la la."

_With a gruff "puff, puff,"_

_He puffed just enough_

_And the hay house fell right down._

In the second before the structure finally succumbed to the Devourer's weight, Shelley managed to slip out between the bars farthest away from the creature. With a deafening crash, the cage collapsed and buried the bicycle in a heap of rusty bars. On top of this heap, the Devourer lay, struggling to get back up.

But before it could stand once more, Shelley snatched a three feet long bar from the heap and bashed away at the abomination's head, with movements reminiscent of a golf-amateur who kept on trying to hit that elusive white ball. The bar's rusty metal repeatedly connected with the deformed lump and sent blood and chunks of flesh sailing up through the air. Even after the Devourer had uttered one last groan and stopped moving, Shelley kept beating the limp body, shouting in both terror and anger: "TRA LA FUCKING LA!"

Part 3: Records

The 4th floor main office was a quadratic room dimly lit by two white candles on a plain wooden desk at the far wall. There wasn't any other furniture apart from the swivel chair in front of the desk and a large metallic archive with 13 drawers at the left wall, probably containing medical records. It had taken Beth and Dean ten minutes to get here through the hallways, only encountering a single Bedridden, which they had easily run past.

Dean sat down at the desk and promptly started working on the portrait, using the black crayon to shade along the right side of _her_ neck. Beth sighed and started pulling out the drawers, looking for the much coveted lobby keys. Each drawer was labeled with two letters, going alphabetically from A-B to Y-Z. In the A-B drawer, Beth found two documents – one about "Bandfield, Carter Linch" and one about "Barkin, Joseph". Beth examined Bandfield's record first.

**18-year-old male, installed in room F16 on December 11. Was arrested for several seemingly unprovoked assaults and attempting to rape his sister, Catherine Linch Bandfield. His mother is an unemployed alcoholic with violent inclinations. Father unknown. Psychiatric treatment will start next week, but use extreme caution.**

A black-and-white photo was attached to the paper. It showed a young, clean-shaven man wearing an ordinary white shirt and with his hair in a slightly dishevelled middle-parting. He looked personable and had a wry, charismatic smile. But there was something wrong with the eyes – they seemed to hide some deep hatred, maybe for the world around him, maybe for himself. It occurred to Beth that, apart from the menacing eyes, he looked like a pop-culture idol, the kind of guy you'd find in a boyband or a teen-movie, the kind of guy teenage girls would have big posters of hanging in their bedrooms. Beth shuddered and dropped the document back in the drawer, then read the record of "Barkin, Joseph":

**47-year-old male, installed in room S14 on August 20. Has now been under treatment for three months and is showing no signs of recovery from his severe psychosis. Continues to believe he caused his daughter's death on August 18, despite being visited by her and the rest of his family on September 3. Seems to have withdrawn to a state of shy childishness, as displayed through his infantile speech pattern and feigned poor spelling. Possesses and protects a metallic box containing a single hair from his daughter's head. Note that we were informed of this by his friends among the other patients; the subject himself refused to reveal the contents of the box to our psychiatrists. Use caution and continue observation.**

Something was wrong about Barkin's record. Beth studied the map of this hospital and discovered there was no room S14. In fact, there weren't any S-rooms at all. "_Maybe this is from another hospital?_" Beth checked the record again and found the words "**Brookhaven Hospital**" written in the upper corner next to an ink-smudged date.

"Brookhaven?" Beth muttered as she replaced the document and closed the A-B drawer.

"What did you say?" Dean looked up from his drawing.

"I found a patient's record from Brookhaven Hospital," Beth said. "What's that doing here?"

"Brookhaven ... That's in Silent Hill. I grew up in that town, but I never went to Brookhaven. Alchemilla's closer to where I lived," Dean explained before concentrating on the portrait once more.

Confused and annoyed, Beth looked through the rest of the drawers. In the third one, E-F, she found a document on "Frost, Dean":

**17-year-old male, installed in room F2 on November 7. Was born in Silent Hill, New England. Father deserted the mother soon afterwards and left her to raise the child on her own (illness partly rooted in lack of father figure?). Mother died in a car accident when the subject was 10. Subject was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Midkiff here in Hooper Lake City. Due to signs of incipient schizophrenia and self-destructive behaviour, the foster-parents entrusted him to our care last month. Prefatory treatment has not procured any remarkable response from the subject. **

Beth put the record back and closed the drawer, casting a sidelong glance at Dean. If he had been admitted when he was 17, and he looked about 29 now, he'd been here for 12 years. "_That has to be enough to make anyone go crazy even if they're sane when they're admitted here,_" Beth thought.

In the S-T drawer, she found a fourth patient's record, this time on "Shelley":

**18-year-old female, installed in room D8. Another case of Anorexia Nervosa. Was forcefed under Dr. Carlson's supervision. Counsellors and psychologists have made little headway regarding the exact cause of her disease. She arrived here on her own and refuses to inform us about her past home, family and surname. Note that the patient also has a severe case of climacophobia.**

"_Climacophobia? I wonder what that is ... Fear of the climate?_" Beth pondered as she searched through the rest of the drawers. In the last one, labeled Y-Z, there was a single hastily scribbled note:

**Randolph: I accidentally left my lobby key in F16. Could you get it for me? I have to catch a train right now! –Carlson**

Beth shut the drawer, turned around and leaned against the archive-cabinet. "Great," she muttered. "Okay, Dean, I guess the key's not here. It might be in room F16. So ..."

She got a feeling Dean wasn't listening. Beth approached him and put a hand on his shoulder. He winced and finally let his gaze leave the portrait. "What?"

"We've gotta go. I read some guy named Carlson left the key in room F16," Beth reiterated.

"No ... I'll stay here. You can go." Dean started shading _her_ head again.

"But we have to stick together," Beth protested. She had seen enough horror movies to know that the main characters always decided to split up for some dumb reason, and then got killed one by one. And this situation seemed far scarier than any movie she'd ever seen.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be safe here," Dean said.

"I'm not worrying about _you_, dammit! How safe do you think _I'll_ be out there, alone?" Beth said, pointing to the door.

"Yeah, maybe you should go with her," Mister suggested.

"Come on, Dean. You can finish your stupid drawing some other time," Beth said and snatched the paper out from under Dean's hands. The crayon left a black streak across _her_ dark yellow hair.

"Well, now it is completely ruined," Doctor grimly declared.

"NO!"

Dean's hands flew out, hitting Beth and retrieving the paper in two swift movements. He was soon trying to straighten the crumpled paper and colour over the black streak in _her_ hair with the yellow crayon. He barely even heard Beth yell "fucking mental case" as she left the room and started walking down the hallway.

---

A/N: Yep, the first chapters may seem a little influenced by Gothika, but I assure you this fic develops very differently. Speaking of hospital horror-films, I saw Session 9 the other day and WOW. Definitely a nice experience for those who enjoy being psychologically creeped out. Well, tune in next week. –E.P.O.


	6. Caliban

DamnGlitch: Draught is synonymous with draft. Look it up if you don't believe me ... I know it's a somewhat old-fashioned word, but I like it. Anyway, if you find some really stupid misspellings, please alert me!

Chapter 6: Caliban

_Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself_

_Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!_

-The Tempest

Beth marched down the hallway, her hands shaking with anger. "Who does that guy think he is?" she grumbled. "Just _who_ the hell does he think he is?" The memory of Dean's hand connecting with the side of her head was still vivid and repeating itself like an old record on the phonograph of her frustrated mind. A dull pain throbbed around her skull and it didn't look like she'd find any aspirins nearby.

The woman stopped in front of a metallic door with the number **F16**. The word "**CaLiBan**" was scribbled across it with fresh blood. Beth knit her brows – the seemingly random combination of letters gave her an ominous feeling of déjà vu. "Caliban. Ca ... Li ... Ban," she muttered. Hadn't she read that somewhere else?

She glanced at the crumpled note in her hand: "**Randolph: I accidentally left my lobby key in F16. Could you get it for me? I have to catch a train right now! -Carlson**".

"_Let's just hope Randolph hasn't been here yet_." Beth dropped the note and opened the door.

F16 was identical to Dean's room, with the exception of the furniture. While Dean's room had been completely empty, F16 had a bed against the right wall and a table at the left wall. The bed was surrounded by various electric equipment and leather straps were draped over the white sheet. Operating instruments and a tape recorder were seated on the wooden table. Near the middle of the back wall, a man wearing a white coat stood with his back to Beth. His head tilted back a little as if he was contemplating the fluorescent tube on the ceiling.

"Hi there," Beth said and walked across the room. The doctor stood still and didn't react to her greetings. "Hey, doctor? Hello?"

As she approached the man, she noticed that his feet were floating an inch above the floor, only the tips of the black shoes touching the grey linoleum. "What the...?"

Beth gingerly reached out and gave the body a slight push. The doctor slowly swung around like a pendulum. "Oh God," Beth breathed, seeing what was keeping the man suspended above the floor. One black string, hanging from the tube on the ceiling, had been attached to the coat collar with a paper clip. Displaying the same incredible dexterity, a second string hanging from the ceiling had been attached to the man's tongue with another clip. "That's ... completely impossible," Beth proclaimed.

Blood had poured down from the roughly pierced tongue and given the front of the coat a dark red colour, but you could still make out the name on the tag: **Dr. John Randolph**. His abdomen and neck were riddled with deep gashes and Beth didn't even want to imagine why the pants had been ripped down.

Suddenly, she realized what the word "CaLiBan" meant. It was an abbreviation of the name Carter Linch Bandfield. Her thoughts wandered back in her memory to the medical record she'd found in the main office:

_Bandfield, Carter Linch: 18-year-old male, installed in room F16 ... Was arrested for several seemingly unprovoked assaults and attempting to rape his sister, Catherine Linch Bandfield ... Use extreme caution._

Beth searched through the pockets of the doctor's coat. Her plan was simple: Get the lobby key, then get the hell out of here. Forget about Kyle, Dean and those weird little girls, just get out of here. However, she had a feeling that would be far from easy. "_Well, if that Caliban guy shows up,_" she thought, clutching the scalpel, "_I'm going to use _very _extreme caution._"

---

Dean carefully shaded the left side of _her_ forehead. There was only a tiny stump left of the black crayon, but fortunately, he was nearly done now. The black streak in _her_ hair was almost invisible, coloured over perfectly with yellow. "I still think you should've gone with that woman, what's her name ..." Mister had always had a hard time remembering names.

"Elizabeth Kalember," Doctor offered.

"Oh yeah, Beth. She seemed like a nice girl. And she was right; you could have finished the portrait some other time."

"That woman almost ruined your drawing," Doctor reminded Dean.

"So what? We all make mistakes. Why can't you just forgive her, Doc?" Mister asked.

"What next? Am I supposed to forgive Silent Hill for taking away _her_? Was the cult just making a mistake as well?"

Dean dropped the crayon and rose from the chair. "Shut UP! Both of you, shut the hell up! ... Doctor, where did Beth say she was going?"

"Why should I tell you?" Doctor grumbled.

Luckily, Mister could remember the answer: "Room F16, she went to room F16."

"I'm going there." Dean started towards the door.

That was when Doctor took over Dean's body and stopped him dead in his tracks. Doctor rarely left Dean's head to control the rest of his body, but when he did, it usually had painful results. "What are you going to do?" Dean asked, voice shaking with dread.

"Doc, please. The kid's gotta catch up with Beth," Mister implored, struggling in vain to get Dean's legs to move and take him closer to the door.

"No. She is not worth it; things will be too dangerous outside on your own. We have to stay here until the place is back to normal," Doctor replied.

"What if it never gets back to normal? We have to do _something_," Mister said.

"Yeah, and who knows what's happening to Beth out there?" Dean added.

"You hit her minutes ago, and now you want to play the hero and save her?" Doctor's voice was brimming with disgust. "You are nothing but a selfish HYPOCRITE!"

Doctor dragged Dean up to the archive-cabinet and pushed him down to his knees. Dean's left hand gripped a drawer and pulled it out. "Put your right hand in there," Doctor ordered.

"Fuck you!" A horizontal fountain of spittle sprayed from Dean's mouth as he yelled the crude insult.

Mister could merely watch Doctor force the man to place his shaking fingers inside the top of the drawer. As the right hand slammed the drawer shut, the unforgiving metal connected with the pale skin and sent waves of agony washing through the fragile fingers. Dean's head soon followed, smacking into the cabinet repeatedly like a fly unable to comprehend why it couldn't float right through the window-pane.

"_Doctor. Stop it._"

The man froze in the middle of his violent frenzy. Dean scrambled to his feet and turned in the direction of the soft female voice. It had come from somewhere around the desk ...

"_Don't hurt my boy._"

"Who's there?" Dean stuttered, even though he knew there couldn't be anyone there. There simply wasn't any room for someone to be hiding at the desk. At least not anyone human. Dean took a few slow, staggering steps up to the desk and asked once more: "Who was that?"

"_It's me._"

Dean looked down at the crumpled portrait on the desktop. "Mom?"

The woman's smile grew wider and two deep dimples appeared next to her thin lips. A brownish mole popped up on the cheek and a little, milky-white scar materialized on the chin. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes grew longer and the orbs themselves turned green instead of blue. Dean realized he had forgotten all these details about her face over the years and thus ignorantly omitted them from his work. "Sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

"_Don't be,_" the mother replied.

"But I forgot you ..."

"_No, you haven't forgotten me. Not at all. Otherwise, you wouldn't have drawn this and I wouldn't be here._"

"I missed you." Dean's eyes were rapidly flooded and the tears poured out.

"_Don't cry. There's nothing to be sad about._" The black streak in her hair slowly reappeared, seeping up through the layer of yellow colour Dean had covered it with. "No!" the man protested, "that's not fair!" He wished Beth had never pulled the paper out under his crayon in the first place.

"_Once a mark like this has been made, it cannot be erased,_" the mother said with that soft, patient voice of a parent explaining to her child that the family pet had gone to Heaven and wouldn't be coming back. The black stroke started moving on its own, aided by neither crayon nor pencil, just continuing across the paper. It twisted itself in zigzag lines, elaborate spirals and childish doodling without any kind of drawing tool behind it.

As any passionate artist might do when seeing his or her greatest work dissolve and vanish, Dean screamed out his frustration and made a frantic attempt to colour over the black streaks with the four crayons. Alas, the blackness spread and covered up all other colours until only the woman's mouth was visible, uttering two last words to her son:

"_Forget me._"

---

"Flesh."

The muffled, croaking voice seeped out from the bed to Beth's right, causing her to flinch and pause the swift pocket-searching for a second of petrified shock. Was there a Bedridden in here? "_No, they don't talk ... Besides, the ECG would have warned me._" Shrugging the voice off as some figment of her imagination or coming from another room, she proceeded searching the pockets of the hanging doctor's white coat.

"Pure flesh."

The voice was obviously coming from the bed in this room and spawned from something far more hideous than her own imagination. Beth hurriedly checked the coat's left breast pocket and found a warm metallic object.

"More pure flesh."

Her hand flew out from the pocket and a small silvery key came into view. It had the words "**LOBBY EXIT**" carved on it. Beth thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than this key and the possibility it conveyed. "_Time to get the hell away from this place._" The woman beamed and jogged back towards the doorway to the corridor.

The smile retreated from her face as quickly as it had appeared when something shrivelled and dark brown shot out from under the bed and literally knocked her off her feet, causing her to land on the linoleum floor. In the painful moment of impact, Beth forgot about her prized key and her grip loosened enough for the key to slip out and fall to the ground.

"Flesh," the demonic figure repeated, scurrying out of its hiding place under the bed. Caliban's voice sounded disturbingly human, in sharp contrast to its fierce, animal appearance. The body looked lithe and rudimentary, with brownish skin slowly, but surely falling off in flakes. A long cloak that seemed to be made of human flesh and skin was draped over its shoulders, with the gory hood concealing its eyes. The mouth remained visible, though – a T-shaped crack stretching across the face, with sharpened teeth jutting out at unnatural angles.

Beth scrambled to her feet and held the scalpel out. It hadn't worked with the Bedridden, but she still tried intimidating the creature. "Don't take one fucking step closer or I'll ---"

"This flesh, now," Caliban interrupted, lisping childishly on each 's'. Its right hand rose and the lamp's yellow gleam glinted in the ludicrously oversize syringe clutched in the bony fingers. It was at least four times as large as a normal syringe and the needle looked several inches long. The yellowish liquid inside was ever so patiently waiting to flow out for an injection.

Beth didn't have time to react before Caliban's hand swung down and the needle cut into her thigh. She instinctively shrieked and jumped back as the cold needle left her flesh with a wet '_schlurp_.' A few streaks of blood trickled down from the superficial, stinging slash and Beth silently prayed none of that yellow liquid had invaded her veins.

Caliban stood still and contemplated the now bloody syringe, clearly intrigued by the scarlet liquid dripping from the needle. "Just like Catherine's," he remarked through the T-shaped, fang-riddled mouth. "Beautiful. Pure."

Fueled by immense hatred for the syringe-wielding freak, but too afraid of the needle to get close, Beth flung her scalpel at it like she would throw a dart at a target-disk in the normal life she used to lead. The scalpel whistled past Caliban's head and clattered to the floor near the doorway.

Caliban let out a hoarse, panting noise vaguely reminiscent of scornful laughter. Its head lolled back and the hood of the organic cloak fell off, revealing two horribly bloated, bloodshot travesties of human eyes. The creature raised the syringe once more and started sauntering towards Beth.

The latter did the only thing possible in a situation where you're defenceless and trapped in a room with your enemy blocking the exit: She drew back. Unfortunately for Beth, she stumbled right into the hanged corpse, which fell off its strings and slumped to the floor. Beth screamed and her gaze briefly stayed at the corporeal remains of dr. Randolph, staring at the blood-caked abdomen and the shredded tongue. "_Who knows what that freak might do to _my_ body if I don't survive this?_"

As if answering the woman's thought, Caliban said: "Make you ... even more ... more beautiful."

Beth came to an abrupt halt as she felt the wooden table pressing against the back of her legs. She whirled around, scanning the table for a weapon. Her eyes feasted on a long, shiny pair of pericardial scissors. She snatched it and turned around to face the creature with her newly acquired weapon.

"But ... don't you want to be beautiful?" the demon hissed.

Beth gave the blunt answer by stabbing the surgical instrument into Caliban's throat. The freak staggered backwards, uttering a long, furious roar before collapsing on the bed.

Its exhausted killer stood leaned against the table for a while, recovering her breath. The slash in her thigh smarted more and more, and a warm, heavy feeling spread out from it. Beth started limping through the room to pick up the lobby key still lying on the floor next to the bed. Looking through the doorway, she noticed that the candles hanging from the corridor ceiling had been replaced by fluorescent tubes once more. The flesh growing on the walls also seemed to be withdrawing into the nothingness it had come from. "_It's all going back to normal again?_"

Beth's legs gave under her and she collapsed on the blood-spattered floor. "Dammit," she murmured with a slow, lethargic voice that sounded completely unfamiliar to her ears, despite having emerged from her own mouth. "That gross bastard ... Must've injected some weird drug ..." Her movements looked far from graceful as her arms had to drag her fallen body up to the coveted key.

Beth's arms finally joined her legs in their complete limpness. Fortunately, her fingertips managed to pull the key into her palm before unconsciousness ensued. And with the key clutched in her hand, the woman went happily to sleep.

---

A/N: Yay for odd references to the picture book in SH4. Tune in next week, when we might find out what's happened to Kyle ... –E.P.O.


	7. Neoplatonic teachings and climacophobia

Chapter 7: Neoplatonic teachings and climacophobia

For a splitsecond or two after Beth awoke, she was in a state of ignorant bliss. She couldn't remember why she had fallen asleep on the cold floor of room F16 or why she held a key in her blood-stained hand. Then, the disturbing memories came crushing down on her peacefully groggy mind like a truck's wheel on an innocent hare, splattering it over a harsh road of fear and confusion.

"I hope you slept well."

Louise's voice startled Beth quite effectively. She scrambled to her feet and raised the pericardial scissors she had defeated Caliban with earlier. The teenaged brunette sat on the edge of the clammy bed, smiling at Beth's newly obtained instinct to ready her weapon whenever she heard a voice, human or monstrous, pierce the silence.

"Take it easy, Beth. I won't hurt you," Louise assured her.

Beth noticed Dr. Randolph's mangled corpse lying on the floor to her left. He had obviously been dead for hours. There was also a young man's body lying next to Louise on the bed. Blood had poured over the naked corpse from a gash in his neck. The glazed eyes were wide open and staring at the cracks in the ceiling. An ordinary syringe lay in his rigid right hand. "Is that …?"

"That's the third recollection. Caliban. Or rather, Carter Linch Bandfield. You know, the geezer you killed back in the Otherworld," Louise reminded Beth in a casual tone.

"I … I killed him?! But I couldn't know he was …"

"Human?"

"Yeah," Beth nodded. "He looked like … I don't know, some kind of _monster_ or something. Did I kill a real … oh God … a real person?" Beth buried her face in her hands and struggled to form a general view of the situation and its consequences.

"Well, that depends. What's human and what's a monster? Just because someone looks sane and normal on the outside, he might as well be a true demon behind the façade," Louise stated, producing a photo from her pocket and showing it to Beth. It was the same image of Carter Linch Bandfield that Beth had found with the document in the office. Once again, the woman found the look in the black-and-white eyes of the otherwise charismatic 18-year-old unsettling.

"That still doesn't explain why he looked like one of those freaky creatures when he attacked me. Am I going utterly insane, too?"

Louise laid the photo on the corpse's head as a sort of shroud. However, this shroud had an image of the deceased's face on it. "_Like the shroud of Jesus,_" Beth mused, shuddering. "In the Otherworld …" Louise began, but was interrupted by Beth:

"What the hell is the Otherworld?"

"The place you were just in. Flesh growing on the walls, lit candles hanging from the ceiling …"

"Yeah, I remember. So if that's the Otherworld, this is the normal world?"

"No. The hospital is still deserted, you might encounter more creatures out there, there's still a weird fog outside and so on," Louise patiently explained. "Think of this place as a golden mean, so to speak, between the Otherworld and the normal world you're used to."

"And how do I get out of here, back to the normal world?" Beth inquired.

Louise gave an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid you can't. Not for the time being."

"Oh yeah?" Beth's fingers curled up to form fists. "Well, when's the time _not_ fucking _being_?!"

"Calm down. You will understand everything eventually," Louise predicted. "Until then, I can understand that this must all be very frustrating for you."

"Damn right it is," Beth grumbled.

"Anyway, you want to know why he," Louise gestured to the gory corpse lying to her right, "looked like a monster." Beth nodded and the girl continued: "In the Otherworld, people's thoughts, emotions and ideas basically take physical shape. Their most wonderful dreams and worst nightmares just appear all of a sudden. What happened to mr. Bandfield or "Caliban" was a result of his own feelings. A result of whatever was hidden behind those eyes," Louise pointed to the black-and-white photo which now served as a crude winding sheet. "He was as disproportioned in his manners as in his shape. A deformed mind moulds a deformed exterior …"

"No," Beth shook her head. "I … I don't think that makes any sense."

"Maybe it doesn't. Still, that's how it works in the Otherworld."

"But in the normal world, it's the other way round."

"Yeah, some people think so," Louise replied. "Other people don't. William Shakespeare didn't. Have you ever read _The Tempest_?"

Beth heaved an annoyed sigh. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Louise chuckled. "It has quite a lot to do with the situation, actually. Have you read it?"

"I guess … A long time ago. I can't remember much now," Beth admitted.

"I've read it, several times. It's my favorite book," Louise said. "I used to read it with my little sister Sharon."

"Your sister …" Beth remembered the younger, silently screaming girl she'd encountered on the street, in the elevator and in the hallway just before the Otherworld invaded the building. "She's got brown hair, too? And bright grey eyes, right?"

Louise jumped up from the bed. "How did you know that?"

"I've met her a few times."

"Where did you last see her? And when?" Louise demanded.

"Uh … I think it was somewhere on this floor. A hallway in the south wing. She acted really weird," Beth said.

"What do you mean, 'weird'?"

"Well, it was just before the shift to that 'Otherworld'. She was screaming, or rather, her mouth was open as if she was screaming, but there was no sound coming out," Beth informed, then added: "It was pretty strange to look at."

"That's … interesting," Louise mumbled. "I can't understand why you'd see Sharon. Maybe Philip knows why … Yeah, I'll ask him," she decided and sauntered out of the room.

"Wait!" Beth said when the teenager was on the threshold to the hallway. "Who's Philip?"

Louise stopped to look back at the bewildered woman. "Oh, you'll probably bump into him sooner or later. He can introduce himself." The girl answered Beth's next query before it had even left her mouth: "And in case you're wondering what to do now, I advise you to find Dean and head for that lovely little town called Silent Hill. It's a little chilly outside, so you'd better go to the first floor safe-keeping room and fetch your clothes." Then, Louise wandered down the hallway to her right, quickly stealing away from Beth's range of vision.

Beth followed towards the doorway, but came to a halt when the thick door inexplicably slammed shut a few feet before her, sending a breath of stale air flowing over her body. It reminded her of the doors in the elevator where she'd first talked with Louise. "Goddammit, I hate that trick!" Beth kicked the door, which didn't even budge a centimetre.

It was only five seconds later that the heavy door creaked ajar, soon pushed the rest of the way by Beth's hand as she bolted into the hallway, eyes darting from side to side. The candles and masses of vibrant flesh were gone. Non-organic, sterile surfaces once more gleamed in the light from the overhead tubes humming on a low, dull note. This humming was thankfully the only sound left; the ambient cries and moans of the Otherworld were gone as well. Of course, there was no sign of Louise.

"Great," Beth commented. She looked down at her blood-smeared patient's gown and realized that Louise had been right about one thing: She would need some warmer clothes outside. Beth studied the map to locate the 1F room the girl had mentioned. It was half as large as the lobby and marked '**Temporary safe-keeping room (for patients' clothes)**'.

"_Well, there's no way I'm going to bother hooking up with Dean again. I'll go to that room, get my stuff and get out of the building. Then I can think about what I'm going to do next_," Beth decided and began walking down the hallway.

---

Kyle Coppola trudged down the steps in the stairwell. The elevator was out of order now, so he had to use the stairs to get to the first floor, where he planned to try the lobby doors again. It had been five minutes since the place had returned to its seemingly normal version, and he felt indescribably glad to be back. He thought he'd have gone crazy himself if he had to spend one more second in those demented hallways …

Sobs.

Kyle froze on the last step before the landing, midway between the doors to the fourth and third floors. Asking himself the same question Beth had asked herself when hearing Caliban for the first time – "_Was that just my imagination?_" – he proceeded down the stairwell.

In his right hand, he held a sleek black handgun which he had found in a desk-drawer while exploring the 4F offices. The gun was relatively easy to wield and had eight bullets left, with room for a total of ten bullets. It had been fully loaded when Kyle found it, but he'd fired two shots at a particularly vicious Bedridden chasing him in the Otherworld.

When he reached the third storey landing, Kyle winced at hearing the same pitiful sobs again. It sounded like a young woman, but this place had taught Kyle not to trust everything his senses told him.

The middle-aged cab driver approached the door and let his fingers give the polished wood a light push. The door noiselessly glid half-open to reveal a horribly familiar, pupated figure curled up on the floor in front of the elevator. "_Was that thing sobbing? No … It has to be someone else nearby._"

Kyle raised the handgun to aim through the doorway. While the Nymph had its back to him, he might as well take the opportunity to get rid of that freak. His index fingers tightened on the trigger and the deafening shot rang through the stairwell and hallways. The bullet tore a hole in the cocoon surface and a mix of blood and pus squirted from the human-like body inside. The Nymph screeched and whirled around, soon dragging itself towards Kyle with animal ferocity. "_Oh fuck …_"

Kyle managed to fire three more shots aiming for the creature's head, but before he could hit the proverbial bull's eye, the Nymph rammed into his shins and he fell backwards until his back collided with the steel banister. As the subsequent pain boomed through his ribs, the pistol left his hand to seek a new home on the bottom of the stairwell, settling on the floor several storeys below with an audible clatter that echoed in Kyle's ears like ominous death bells. "Oh FUCK!" Kyle yelled out loud as he fell painfully to the floor of the landing.

The Nymph wasted no time in grabbing hold of its victim's shoulders and pulling him head first into the pupa. Despite his fear of getting the matter in his mouth, Kyle screamed for help as loud as possible. He thought he heard a door open and shoes pounding the hallway floor, but maybe that was just a hopeful side of his imagination as well. Putting his hands against the edge of the chrysalis, he fought to stay out of the Nymph's cramped abode, but the deranged being just cackled on and easily dragged him farther into the warm, gooey world inside.

Then, Kyle heard a number of dry whacks somewhere above him and the Nymph squealed in agony, letting go of its victim. The latter immediately scrambled out of the pupa and up to his feet. It turned out his saviour was an unnaturally thin, redhaired woman in her early twenties, thrashing the Nymph with a rusty, metallic bar.

"I, uh … I think it's dead now," Kyle remarked.

The young woman nodded and stepped back from the bloody heap, arms falling to her sides. "Who … are … you?" she said, scant of breath.

"I should be asking you that. You just saved me from that … thing," Kyle glanced at the dead Nymph. "I don't know how I'm ever going to thank you …"

"Just say thanks. I'm Shelley Tate," Shelley said and reached out a hand.

"Thanks so much," Kyle said and shook hands with her. "I'm Kyle Coppola. So, what are --- hey, what's wrong?"

Shelley's eyes widened and her face turned pale, her gaze fixed on something behind Kyle. The man turned around, but didn't see anything unusual about the stairwell. "Shelley? Are you okay?"

"C-can't breathe," Shelley gasped, staggering through the doorway to the corridor, where she dropped the metallic bar and slumped down with her back to Kyle. After a while, her breathing slowed down and her pulse went back to normal. Kyle gingerly laid a hand on her sweat-dripping shoulder. "What happened? You looked like you were gonna be sick," he observed.

"I … I'm okay," Shelley stammered and got up, legs shaky. "It's just … I have climacophobia."

"What's that?"

"Fear of s-staircases. Especially when they're …" Shelley paused and stood there with closed eyes for a few seconds, until the lump in her throat had cleared away. "Specially when they're g-going down."

---

A/N: Apologies for letting you all wait so long for such a short chapter. And yes, fear of stairs is a real phobia known as climacophobia (whoa, I actually did research! Thank God for Google). Tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	8. Back

A/N: Happy Advent! Thanks for the review, Snikers. By the way, you should all check out this author's SH fic, Nythera. Pretty good stuff IMO ... Ahem, on to the new chapter.

Chapter 8: Back

Large steel drawers lined the walls of the safe-keeping room. They were labeled with the letters of the hospital rooms, from the first floor's A rooms to the fourth floor's G and H rooms. Beth remembered waking up at the G ward and thus started searching the G drawers.

Cold breezes wafted out each time she pulled a drawer from the wall. The chilly, stale air combined with the long, rectangular drawers made the room disturbingly reminiscent of a morgue. "_Well, in a place like this, I wouldn't be surprised if there _was_ a morgue nearby ..._"

Most of the drawers were empty, although a few of them contained casual clothes or other ordinary belongings of the hospital patients. Beth found her own stuff in G8 and swiftly tossed the gown off to don her dark jeans, blue sweater and grey jacket. During the short moment when she was completely naked, she couldn't help imagining there was some perverted being hiding somewhere in the room, peeping on her exposed body. Needless to say, she felt relieved to be fully dressed again and headed for the only exit in the room, a wooden door in the wall to the left of the E-G drawers.

As she reached out for the knob, a low, familiar noise rumbled behind her. Beth recognized it immediately.

It was the sound of a drawer being pulled out.

The noise continued for what felt like hundreds of aeons. Still facing the door, Beth could only intercept that the drawer in question was located somewhere to her right. When the noise finally stopped, Beth procrastinated for a few seconds before slowly turning around with one hand holding on to the doorknob.

The room was still deserted. The F2 drawer was pulled out as far as it could get without falling from the cabinet. She couldn't see its contents from her position, but the message scratched into the side with large, inelegant scribbles was clearly visible:

**YOU FORGOT THIS**

"_Okay, that could have been written before I came here. But who the hell pulled the drawer out? And … where are they now?_"

Beth could have left the room there and then, but curiosity opressed her fear and forced her to approach the drawer.

It turned out to contain nothing more than a small, rectangular box made of black plastic. Beth gingerly picked it up and removed the lid. Several pencils and an eraser lay inside. "_What would I need them for? … Well, I guess I'll just take it with me, anyway. Wouldn't want to disappoint whoever pulled the drawer out._" Beth replaced the lid, slipped the box into her trouser pocket and closed the drawer.

She walked up to the door again and winced when she heard the drawer burst out for the second time. The scraping noise of steel against steel was much more shrill and loud than before. It only lasted for half a second this time, but when Beth turned around, the drawer seemed to have been pulled out even farther. Above the first one, a new message was scratched into the grey surface, undoubtedly concerning the contents of the black box in Beth's pocket:

**GIVE THEM TO DEAN**

A small, pale hand hung over the edge of the drawer, its nails several centimetres long. The index fingernail rested near the top of the N in 'DEAN', leaving no doubt as to who could have scrawled the four monosyllabic words.

"_Maybe no one pulled the drawer open. Maybe it was _pushed_ open from the inside ..._"

Beth didn't even want to think about what the hand's owner could look like. She spun around, opened the door and dashed down the easily claustrophobia-inducing corridors. In this case, the old proverb 'out of sight, out of mind' didn't apply to Beth. She couldn't see that gross, chalkwhite hand anymore, but her imagination kept giving her twisted glimpses of what the drawer's occupant could have looked like.

These alarming thoughts were wiped from her mind like rain from a windshield as Beth came skidding into the lobby and saw Dean sitting on a bench against one of the pillars closest to the exit. He was contemplating a crumpled paper clutched in his hands. It was white on one side and utterly blackened on the other. The man looked up when Beth entered the hall.

"What happened to you?" Beth frowned. Dean's head now featured a number of dark blue bruises and cuts. His hands looked like they had been squashed in a vice a couple of hours ago.

"Doctor did it …"

"Who's Doctor?"

"Er … No one, forget it. I just …" Dean's sentence didn't get far up the tracks before running out of steam as he struggled fruitlessly to come up with an explanation.

"Look, I found this in a drawer nearby. I think it's yours," Beth said, cautiously approaching the schizophrenic to give him the contents of drawer F2.

Dean opened the box. "Now say thank you," Mister advised. "Thanks. I haven't seen these for a while," said Dean as he glared at the old pencils he used to draw with many years ago.

"Get me outta here …"

"It's allright, Shelley, just a few more steps now."

The muffled voices were coming from the other side of the stairwell door next to the elevator. Beth and Dean cocked their eyes at the door, which promptly burst open as Kyle and Shelley entered the lobby. The shivering woman made a beeline for the nearest bench and slumped down, panting heavily as if the short trip down the stairs had been the most exhausting experience of her life.

"Beth?" Kyle said.

"Yeah, it's me. You were … Kyle, right?" Beth asked.

The cab driver nodded. "Have you found out what the hell's going on?"

"No, not yet. I think that little girl knows, though. She said something about Silent Hill …"

"What little girl?" Kyle frowned.

"The girl I saw in the elevator - Louise. Anyway, that doesn't matter. I have no idea what this is all about and I don't care a damn," Beth declared, showing Kyle the lobby key she had found in Caliban's room.

"So … we can get out now?" Kyle beamed.

"Of course," Beth said and started towards the exit.

"I don't think you're going to get out just because you leave the hospital," Dean said tonelessly.

"Uh … who's he?" Kyle inquired, just noticing the motionless person sitting on the bench with his crumpled paper.

"I'm Dean Frost."

"I met him in the mental wing on the fourth floor," Beth said. "He's …" She lowered her voice to keep the mental patient in question out of earshot. "I think he's a schizophrenic."

"Great," Dean commented.

"And who's that, anyway?" Beth gestured to the climacophobic on the bench.

"Her name's Shelley. She saved me from that … chrysalis-thing," Dean said. "She's afraid of stairways, so getting down here from the third floor wasn't easy. The elevator wasn't working, so we had to use the stairwell … Let's just get out of here, okay?"

"Sure." Beth walked up to the exit and stuck the key into the lock. "Hey, Dean? Shelley? Are you guys coming?"

The patients shakily rose from the benches and approached the doors. Beth turned the key and grabbed the handle. She cast Kyle a brief, anxious glance, as if asking "what if Dean's right and the world outside has gone crazy as well?". Her fingers tightened around the handle and she pulled the door open.

The parking lot was crowded. Cars swarmed around everywhere, their tires carving intricate, erratic patterns in the slush ice covering the asphalt. A few doctors, nurses and patients' visitors wandered about in the swarm of cars. The street surrounding the parking lot was even more noisy and busy-looking, teeming with something Beth truly appreciated after her trip to Hell: The presence of other normal, sane human beings.

"We're … we're really back, aren't we?" Kyle grinned from ear to ear and looked over his shoulder at the room behind them. "We're really back!" The lobby was once more full of patients, visitors and hospital staff. The stale air, layers of dust and unsettling silence had simply vanished, leaving no traces of that opressive atmosphere behind.

Even the thick, grey fog seemed to have lifted the moment Beth opened the lobby door.

The astonished quartet stepped out of the building and away from the entrance to make way for all the busy people entering and exiting the lobby. A sign above the entrance proclaimed '**LAMBERT HOSPITAL – Proud to aid the people of Hooper Lake City since 1910**'.

Having stayed inside the hospital for so many years, Dean looked hypnotized by the sensation of snowflakes falling on him. Passers-by couldn't help staring at the group's bruised, gory and (in Kyle's case) gooey visages, but no one actually bothered asking them what the hell had happened.

"So … what do we do now?" Shelley said.

"Well, I guess we can go back to our normal lives and try to forget about that creepy world," Beth replied.

"Uh, I'm not going back to the hospital. Not after … what I saw in there." Shelley shuddered at the memory of the Otherworld, the Devourer and the Nymph she had rescued Kyle from.

"Yeah, me too. I can't go back in there," Dean said. Doctor and Mister whole-heartedly agreed.

"Where are you going to live?" Beth asked.

"You could go back to those foster-parents - Mr. and Mrs. Midkiff. They were pretty nice," Mister remarked.

"Those 'nice' foster-parents are the ones who put you in this hospital in the first place. They only want to forget about you and move on with their lives," Doctor said. "You cannot blame them."

"I don't know," Dean replied. "I don't have any cash or anything."

Shelley shook her head. "Me neither. Maybe we should really go back to the hospital …"

"Look, the two of you can crash at my place," Kyle offered. "Just until you get a job, and then you can move out and get your own flats, allright?"

"Really?" Shelley was dumbfounded by the pleasant surprise.

"Well, you did save my life in there. I owe you one," Kyle said.

"Great! I guess we could get jobs as clerks or something. Right, Dean?"

"Yeah," Dean nodded with an absent-minded tone.

"And if we haven't moved out in a month or so, you can kick us right out," Shelley grinned. "So anyway, where do you live?"

"Hooper Lakeshore Apartments, across town on the south side. The rent's decent and I've got a couple of good couches the two of you could sleep on," Kyle said.

"Actually, I've got a flat in that building, too. It's got a small extra bedroom I hardly ever use. One of you guys could stay there, too," Beth suggested.

"Sure. We can figure out who's crashing where when we get there," Shelley said as they started walking down the parking lot towards the street. "We'll take the subway, right?"

"Of course," Beth said.

They walked silently down the icy sidewalk for a while. "Good to be back," Dean muttered.

Beth nodded, smiling wryly. The cool breezes softly stroked her face and felt so wonderfully different from the stale, acrid air of the Otherworld hospital. The wind playing with her hair confirmed to the relieved woman that she was back in the real world where nothing would ever cause her to question her own sanity.

Beth looked up at the sky of this beautiful January morning. There was no blood up there. No rust, no gore, no bizarre scenery of any kind. Just a clean, milky-white sky, from which countless snowflakes were about to descend.

It sure was good to be back.

---

In the main office on the fourth floor of Lambert Hospital, a 40 years old man stood at the window of the otherwise deserted room, next to the table where Dean's drawing had been ruined.

The man wore a dark brown anorak reminiscent of a monk's robe. His bald head was concealed under the jacket's hood and two intricate, red symbols were tattooed on his hands. They basically consisted of three circles arranged in triangular patterns inside larger circles. Rune-like letters lined the circumferences of the large circles.

"Whether this be or be not, I'll not swear," the man quoted as he stared out the window, watching the beaming quartet walk down the street outside towards the subway entrance.

"They think they're back," Louise remarked, stepping into the room from the desolate hallway outside.

"I know."

Louise walked up to the window and watched Kyle lead the way down the stairs to the subway. "Philip, I was talking to Beth earlier, just after the shift to this world. She told me she'd encountered Sharon."

Philip looked down from the window, interest piqued. "Sharon?"

"Yeah, screaming silently. How can Beth see her when I can't?" Louise frowned.

"I don't know. Spirits like her can be very inscrutable."

"I really miss her …"

Philip crouched down to reach the girl's eye level and gave a reassuring smile. "After the ritual, Sharon won't ever have to leave you again. God will make sure the two of you can live together happily for as long as you want. You have to remember that."

"God will take care of us?"

"God will take care of you."

"And no one's going to take her away?"

"No one."

A dreamy smile emerged on Louise's face.

---

In the women's restroom one storey below Louise and Philip, a huge lump of flesh and fat lay inside one of the stalls. Its obese body looked battered, lying in a pool of its own thick blood.

The Devourer stirred and let out a guttural groan as it stood on its deformed legs. It would seem impossible for this thing to survive after Shelley had thrashed it with the metal bar, and yet it remained alive. After all, a mere physical fight was hardly enough to get rid of it for good. The Devourer licked the blood and pus off its face with its hideous tongue and exited the stall.

The wide mirror above the counter was still there, and in the middle of the glass was the black hole from which the abomination had originally wriggled out. A quiet echo of Shelley's voice drifted out from the hole: "_Sure. We can figure out who's crashing where when we get there. We'll take the subway, right?_"

Hearing the voice of its sole reason for existing, the Devourer uttered a hungry roar, bolted across the room and through the gap in the mirror.

---

A/N: I promise not to introduce any more characters in this story. Philip's the last member of the cast. (counts) That gives me a total of 7 persons to keep track of. Yay! Tune in next week … -E.P.O.


	9. The Ride

Chapter 9: The Ride

Beth and Kyle led the way through the windy underground hallways and down the ever-descending escalators. Dean and Shelley followed closely, having never set foot in the subway before. Pick-pockets were everywhere, but the handgun Kyle had picked up in the hospital seemed to scare them away. Large posters advertising the latest razor blades, vacuous Hollywood movies and cigarettes lined the white walls.

The quartet soon reached a hall with a black depression for the train tracks resting in the middle, between two narrow platforms. The green tiles covering the floor reflected the fluorescent lights above. Roughly fifty passengers were waiting on each platform, filling the hall with scattered echoes of trivial conversations. Shelley and Dean sat down on a marble bench, while Beth and Kyle stood at the edge of the platform, staring at the stagnant sea of coals between the tracks.

"What were you doing in the hospital?" Dean asked.

"Anorexia," Shelley replied.

"What's that?"

Shelley rolled her eyes. The guy really had lived an isolated life in the mental wing. "I'll explain it some other time," she said, glancing at the yellow numbers on the black count-down box hanging over their platform:

**NEXT DESCENT: 01.11**

Shelley winced and blinked furiously, then looked back up at the digital letters and numbers:

**NEXT TRAIN: 01.09**

"_Phew. Just my stupid imagination …_"

Meanwhile, Beth's gaze was following a grey cat wandering through the dense forest of human legs on the adjacent platform. No one in the crowd noticed the animal gracefully making its way down the platform and up the stairs to the corridors above.

"I feel like I've seen that cat before," Kyle said.

"Of course you have. It was in the hospital, too," Beth reminded him. She looked pale and nervous, trying not to interpret the cat's presence as a terrible omen.

"No, I feel like I saw it sometime before I came to the hospital. I just can't remember where or when; it's like déja vu. And … it makes me feel sad somehow."

"Seeing a _cat_ makes you feel sad?" Beth gave Kyle a look of odd amusement.

"I don't know, there's just something depressing about it. If only I could remember what happened when I first saw it …"

"Whatever," Beth shrugged. "Looks like our ride's coming now."

The train rushed out from the dark tunnel and into the brightly lit hall like a worm slithering out of the soil. It came to an abrupt halt and the doors slid aside. Waves of passengers immediately flooded in and out of the eight cars.

Beth and Kyle found tolerably clean seats in the back corner next to a large window. The rectangular pane was greasy and scratched, but the drab view of the walls whizzing by outside wasn't too intriguing, anyway. Shelley yawned and leaned back in her seat next to Beth, while Dean had to stand up, clutching a steel pole for support as the car shook and jolted through the tunnels.

Suddenly, Beth thought she saw a little flash of milky-white and scarlet just outside the corner of the window.

The shapeless black surfaces instantaneously resumed slurring past the window, unbroken by any lighter colours or shapes. But the memory of the brief, organic flash stayed in Beth's mind.

"_Calm down. Just relax. You've been through a lot today, and you're tired. Besides, no one else in the car noticed anything. It was a trick of your imagination,_" said her ever-soothing voice of reason. It had betrayed her before, though.

Another flash of skin appeared outside the window for a startling splitsecond. There was a muffled thud as an arm banged into the pane, leaving a crimson handprint behind.

Beth let out a short scream, jumping up from her seat. Most of the fifteen other passengers shot her concerned and irritated looks before focusing back on their conversations, newspapers or whatever they passed the time with during these dull train rides.

"What do you think you're doing?" Kyle said softly.

Beth glared down at him. "You mean you haven't seen that?" she asked, gesturing to the pane behind her.

Which was now completely free of blood. The dark wall continued gliding from right to left outside.

"What the … I swear, I saw something …"

"Beth, just sit down," Kyle sighed.

The car jolted and a disquieted Beth half sat, half fell back down to her seat. "How long before this ride's over?" Shelley asked.

"We should have two stops left before it's our turn to get off, at Malone Station. And we're already at the first stop," Kyle said as the train brakes kicked in and the doors opened. Beth savoured the moment of freedom, knowing she could just walk out to the platform if she wanted to get away.

Then, the doors closed and the train rumbled onwards, rendering all thoughts of escape pointless. There were now only nine other passengers occupying the car. Beth stared at the window as the crowd on the platform was rapidly replaced by the bleak view of the godforsaken tunnel. She had nearly drifted off to a well-earned nap when the blurry head smacked against the other side of the pane few inches from the woman.

The bloody imprint of a screaming child's face stayed visible on the glass for half a second before the lights began flickering.

Beth's yelp of shock at seeing the face on the window soon drowned in a cacophony of shouts and shrieks from the rest of the passengers. The jolts grew even more violent, sending many passengers falling painfully to the floor. Beth heard a frustrated cry somewhere to her right and vaguely sensed that Dean had dropped his box of drawing tools.

The fluorescent tubes on the ceiling enveloped the chaotic scene in a flickering, dark yellow light, but Kyle observed that another light was coming from the tunnel outside – a warm, reddish light that could indicate nothing else than a huge fire.

More contorted faces and erratic body parts whizzed past the windows, and Kyle was thankful the train speed didn't allow him to catch more than blurry glimpses. However, even these glimpses were downright unsettling. It looked like hundreds of naked, blood-smeared figures inhabited the tunnels outside. People of all ages and appearances whirled around in an unrythmical, obscene dance.

A few of them tried to get inside the train, clinging to the walls and pounding the metal to find a way in. Kyle could faintly hear them crawl around on the roof and in the tight space between the tracks and the bottom of the car. They sat on the windows like insects on windshields, glaring at him through the thick glass with wide leers that seemed to say "_Come join us. You know you belong here._"

The train let out a strident screech as if braking, but it only seemed to go faster through the hellish tunnel. Soon, the metallic screech turned into the same air raid siren Beth had heard in the hospital.

In the disorienting strobe light, Beth noticed Sharon walking down the middle of the car. The little girl's eyes were locked onto Beth's, and her mouth was once more wide open in a silent scream. Her movements were slow and steady, even though the car's jolts would make it impossible for anyone to keep their footing, let alone walk in a straight line. Nonetheless, Sharon effortlessly walked up to Beth and touched the woman's forehead with her fingertips as if blessing her.

A crushing migraine immediately assaulted Beth's head and she fell from her seat, screaming in agony. It was the exact same migraine she had felt in the hospital elevator, when trying to put a hand on Sharon's shoulder. And just like back in the elevator, she had another vision of the vandalised bicycle.

This time, the culprits were still at the scene. A group of teenage kids stood around the bike, laughing and talking about Sharon, "that goddamn witch". One of the kids, a red-haired boy with a switchblade knife, pushed the bicycle down to the snow-carpeted asphalt. An older-looking boy pulled off the bike chain and flung it away, while the red-haired hoodlum proceeded to cut the tyres open. The group then smirked at their handiwork and walked off.

The vision ended as abruptly as it had started, and Beth found herself lying on the quaking train floor. The lights finally gave up their death throes and all stopped flickering at once, rendering the car completely dark for. Somewhere to Beth's left, Sharon stuttered a whisper: "You can't imagine how cold it is here."

The fluorescent lights all softly hummed back into life, illuminating the whole train as brightly as usual. Beth scrambled to her feet and scanned the car. Kyle and Shelley stood to her left, brows furrowed with utter confusion. To her right, Dean was crawling around the benches on his hands and knees, searching for the pencils that had escaped their confinement within the black box. Sharon was nowhere to be seen.

Louise stood at the other end of the car, next to a middle-aged man with weird, circular symbols tattooed on his hands. His head was shaved free of all hair and he wore a thick coat vaguely resembling the robe of a monk. Beth wouldn't be surprised if he _was _a highly religious person. He looked like the kind of guy you'd find roaming the big city streets to yell at passers-by about the Apocalypse and Messiah.

Beth suddenly realized the car wasn't going through the slightest jolt anymore. It seemed to have slowed the previous break-neck speed to an idle snail's pace. This gave the six remaining passengers a perfect view of the tunnel outside, but Beth refrained from casting even a single curious glance. She had already had her fair share of mental scars from this dark adventure.

Focusing her gaze on Louise across the narrow aisle, Beth asked with a shaking voice: "When will this end?"

"When I want it to end." Louise gave an almost imperceptible smile. To Beth's right, Dean replaced the last pencil and put the lid back on the box as he rose from the floor.

"Well, you'd better want it to end right now, or I'm going to make you wish it hadn't started at all," Beth grumbled.

"Who is that girl?" Kyle said.

"Her name's Louise. I've met her before," Beth said. "She must be the one controlling all these weird worlds …"

"Yes, I am," Louise nodded. "And I'm sorry that I can't let you return to the normal world until you've helped me. I really am very sorry."

Beth pivoted to face Kyle. "Shoot her."

"What?!" Kyle glared incredulously at the determined woman. The latter didn't have time to talk him round. In the blink of an eye, Beth had snatched the handgun from Kyle and held it up in two remarkably steady hands, aiming for Louise's chest. Four bullets were left in the sleek weapon.

"Beth, she's just a kid!" Shelley said.

Beth slowly shook her head. "She's the reason we're all in this mess. If she died … This would be over for good."

Three shots rang out, their deafening noise mixing with Shelley's scream of terror. However, the target remained unscathed, the teasing smile not yielding for one splitsecond. The bullets clattered on the floor a few feet from Louise. "What the fuck?!" Beth flung the pistol to the ground. "I should have known, huh? You control this world, so you might as well have a goddamn invisible wall around you."

"That is one way to put it, yes," the man next to Louise remarked.

"And you are …?" Kyle asked.

"Father Philip Blackmer of the Valtiel sect," Philip said, confirming Beth's suspicion that he was a religious guy. "I was sent here from Silent Hill to find this girl." He laid a bony hand on the teenager's shoulder. "You see, Louise and her sister Sharon both have very important parts to play in the Awakening of our God."

"Did you hear that? He's in the cult!" Doctor said. "You can't let them get away with what they did to _her_." Dean was already running across the car, hands stretched out to grip Philips throat. But exactly like the three bullets, he seemed to be repelled by some invisible shield and collapsed to the floor when he was only a few feet from the priest.

Louise shook her head with feigned pity. "Some people just can't learn from experience."

Dean groaned and scrambled to his feet, retreating to the other end of the car where Beth, Shelley and Kyle stood with dumbfounded looks. "Okay, you've made your point. We can't get out of here, because Alice there seems to be in charge of this fucked up Wonderland," Kyle pointed to Louise. "But you could at least tell us, in plain English, what the hell's going on here? I mean … Where _is_ 'here', anyway?"

"This is where all humans go sooner or later," Philip beamed, gesturing to the car windows. "Each and every human being. Why don't you take a look at them?"

And Kyle looked.

The tunnel had inexplicably transformed into one immense underground cavern, where swarms of mournful figures floated through the air as if diving in the deep sea. The shoals of nude humans were enveloped in reddish flames that appeared to rise from their own bodies. Although a few of them were burning from every inch of their skin, most of the figures only burnt from specific body parts. A young woman in an advanced state of pregnancy had flames shrouding her expanded torso. A skinny boy at the age of 8 screamed as the crimson fire devoured his eyes. An elderly man glared lethargically at his burning hands.

"Who are they?" Beth asked, having finally found the courage to look out the windows as well.

"Spirits," came the terse answer from Father Philip. "And what you are seeing is only a square centimetre of the proverbial iceberg surface. The amount of spirits paying for their sins out there would be impossible to count … But we have more important deeds to carry out than watching their suffering. If you want to return to your normal lives, you merely have to help us with the ritual."

"The ritual?" Shelley repeated. "How the hell are we supposed to help with some crappy ritual of yours?"

"You can start by going to Silent Hill," Louise said. "It shouldn't be more than a three hour drive from here. Once you have arrived in the town, I'll tell you how you're going to help us."

The girl turned around and opened the metal door at the end of the car. A blinding light streamed in from outside. Beth faintly saw Louise and Philip step through the heavenly doorway, before she had to clench her eyelids down to protect her orbs from the white glare.

---

Beth awoke with a start on the uncomfortable corner seat. The train once more looked normal, filled with a noisy crowd of ordinary passengers. Looking through the window, Beth wasn't surprised to find the infernal view from her dream gone and replaced by the dull black wall, whizzing by at the usual speed. Dean, Shelley and Kyle soon awoke on the seats around her. Apparently, they had also dozed off to a brief nap while the train approached Malone Station.

The train stopped at their destination and the doors slid open. The group rushed out and started wandering out of the subway.

"We're still not back," Beth muttered, standing on the ascending escalator. "And that dream in the train … That wasn't a dream."

Kyle and Shelley nodded. Dean glanced at the abrasion his forearm had attained when he fell to the car floor, repelled by Louise's power. "We have to go to Silent Hill," Kyle said.

The others mumbled their agreement as the escalator brought them out of the subway's darkness and up to the twilight street.

---

A/N: Tune in next week … Wolf Ravensoul: Haven't read much by those authors, but I started Mountain of Madness the other day. Thanks for the review on Family. Actually, the Egyptians depicted Amamet as a half hippo, half crocodile, who eats the souls if their hearts weigh more than a feather. –E.P.O.


	10. Going to town

A/N: Yay, the chapters finally get double digits … Sheitan: Tak! Wolf Ravensoul: Haven't seen the Grudge or King's Kingdom remake. Sharon and Louise have nothing to do with Alessa and Cheryl or any scenes of SH3. SlapDash: He figured it out because Louise said it in the train. Snikers: Woah, that review made my day! Thanks a lot…

Chapter 10: Going to town

The walk from the subway exit to Hooper Lakeshore Apartments lasted a few minutes. Beth led the way to the block where her flat was located on the third floor. As they were about to ascend the narrow staircase, Shelley paused, shivering. "I c-can't go up there," she declared.

"Climacophobia?" Kyle said, his right foot already resting on the third step of the stairway.

Shelley nodded.

"But you didn't have any trouble with the subway stairs …"

"Those were different. They were wider. It's the narrow ones I can't … I can't …" Shelley's bottom lip quivered, but no words would glide over it. She turned around and raked a shaking hand through her red strands.

"There's a lift, too. But it only carries two persons at a time," Beth informed, already pressing the button for the elevator doors. Kyle and Shelley took the lift while Beth and Dean made their way up the stairs.

The group waited silently in the third floor corridor while Beth pulled out a key from her wallet and unlocked door 102, pushing it half-open. Her hand shot around the frame and flicked the light switch with a quick, skilled movement, which she had practiced to pure instinct over the years. The darkness was immediately ousted by a bright yellow tinge from the ceiling lamps. Beth pushed the door all the way back and entered her flat. "Home sweet h---"

The murmur trailed off as she noticed the sorry state of her oh-so-sweet home. Cobwebs had invaded the ceiling corners. Thick layers of dust carpeted every horizontal surface. The once healthy, bright green colour of the potted plants had withered to dark shade of brown. "Huh? I must have been at the hospital for weeks. But why didn't anyone take care of my flat in the meantime?" Beth frowned.

"Maybe this isn't real either," Shelley said behind her.

"Yeah. It's hard to get used to … I really don't know what to think anymore." Beth sighed and picked up a Honda key from a chest of drawers. "Well, I guess we can go now. My car's parked in the lot just outside."

"Wait," Dean said. "It's freezing out there. Don't you have any clothes I could borrow?" He still only wore the mental patient's uniform from Lambert Hospital, its thin green fabric hardly too suitable for the chilly weather.

"Sure," Beth said and walked through the living room to a narrow bedroom.

The pillows and sleeping quilt lay in a creased mess on the bed. It was just like that sunday morning when she had left the apartment to go to the bakery, blissfully ignorant of the horrors awaiting her in Louise's worlds. She had apparently had a rather eventful dream the night before, but Beth couldn't recall what had made her toss the quilt around like that. She had never been able to remember much of her dreams. "_And now that I'm trapped in another person's dream, all my experiences are going to be burnt into my memory. How ironic._"

Beth searched through her scant wardrobe and walked back to Dean carrying unisex trousers and a warm coat. "Thanks," the man said, donning the clothes over his hospital uniform.

They were about to head back to the parking lot when Beth froze on the first step of the staircase. Dean and Shelley were already descending in the elevator, and Kyle had reached the landing between the third and second floors. "Kyle, wait!"

"What is it?" the man asked, watching Beth return to apartment 102 and unlock the door again.

"It's this book Louise mentioned. I'm sure I still have it lying about somewhere," Beth said as she walked up to her living room bookcase and let her fingers crawl along the shelves like a spider looking for a fly in its cobweb. The fingers abruptly paused at an old-looking, five centimetres thick book in the middle of the bottom shelf. Beth pulled it out and brushed the dust off.

Kyle gave a wry grin. "What is that, the Necronomicon?"

Beth handed the book to Kyle. "See for yourself."

"_The collected works of Sir William Shakespeare, Volume VI,_" Kyle read aloud from the golden letters on the brown front cover. "Contains _The Tempest_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure _and _King Henry IV_." He shot Beth a surprised look. "I didn't think you were the type who reads Shakespeare plays."

"Actually, I don't. It's been at least ten years since I read that, and it was mostly boring as hell," Beth admitted, grabbing a backpack from a coathook next to the front door. "But Louise said The Tempest had 'a lot to do with the situation' or something like that. She told me it was her favorite story, too, and she used to read it with Sharon."

"Sharon?"

"Her sister." Beth dropped the book into the backpack and slung it over her shoulders. "Anyway, Dean and Shelley must be wondering what's keeping us here." She locked the apartment door behind them and they hurried down the stairs.

"What took you so long?" Shelley asked. The reunited quartet exited the apartment building and started walking across the parking lot.

Beth told her about the Shakespeare play. "I think I'll read it in the car. Maybe there's something useful in it," she said and unlocked the doors to her Honda. The car usually had a silvery gloss reflecting the sunlight – this had often led Beth's vexing mother to call it 'the show-off-mobile' – but in the darkness of the 19.00 P.M. winter evening, the vehicle's colour was obscured to a dull grey. "_In the night all cats are grey,_" Beth thought, shivering. She could see her own breath rising from her mouth like a ghostly puff of smoke.

They quickly agreed that Kyle, as an experienced taxi driver, should be sitting at the wheel. Beth entered the front seat next to him, while Shelley and Dean sat down on the back seat. The doors were slammed shut, and Kyle carefully got the Honda out of the parking lot. The icy streets looked unusually void of traffic. Beth opened the glove compartment and produced a book filled with maps of Hooper Lake City and its New England environs.

"No thanks," Kyle interrupted when she started guiding him towards the nearest highway to Silent Hill. "I've been driving around here for years; I know the route."

"Suit yourself." Beth replaced the maps in the messy compartment and immersed herself in the Shakespeare volume. Behind her, Shelley was tossing slightly in her sleep. On the other side of the backseat, Dean stared out the window at the one- and two-storey buildings of the peaceful neighbourhood. The snow was neatly shovelled off the sidewalk and salt poured all over the roads, allowing Kyle to speed up a tad whilst in such safe territory.

At one point, Mister thought he recognized one of the houses as the home of Mr. and Mrs. Midkiff, Dean's former foster-parents. "Wishful thinking," Doctor commented.

Meanwhile, Beth was reading some obscure academic's two-page introduction to The Tempest. The professor started off by informing her that this was Shakespeare's last work and that the main character, the powerful wizard Prospero, represented the great poet himself. Bored and weary, Beth skipped the introduction and began skimming through the list of _dramatis personae_:

_Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan_

_Gonzalo, an honest old Counsellor_

_Trinculo, a Jester_

_Caliban, a savage and deformed Slave _

"What the fuck?!" Beth exclaimed.

Kyle winced and let his eyes leave the road to glance at the passenger next to him. "What's wrong?"

If Beth wanted Kyle to comprehend what the name Caliban meant to her, she'd have to tell him about her encounter with the monster of room F16. And frankly, she didn't have the energy to take that walk down Memory Lane. "Nothing," she replied.

Kyle's suspicious gaze lingered on Beth for a second before returning to the road. He knew that "nothing" wasn't enough to cause one to blurt "what the fuck", but he was too tired and not curious enough to ask again. Beth ran her eyes over the introduction and soon found a passage on Caliban:

_The savage Caliban is the son of an evil witch and of Satan himself. Caliban's name is indeed an anagram for Canibal, a name given to the Carribean Indians by travellers. Caliban's character has caused much discussion. There were two concepts of "the savages". According to the French philosopher Montaigne, they were the natural and unspoiled ones. According to the view our poet shared, they were "natural" in the sense that their souls were low and uncultivated or degenerate. In the play, Caliban should therefore be represented as wearing a hide and not, as he is often shown, resembling a fish or amphibian. _

While Beth read, Kyle drove by St. Gilliam's School where blood had trickled over his taxi earlier. The cab was still parked on the road next to the school, its yellow metal completely covered with streaks of crimson. Kyle shuddered and sped past his old vehicle.

In the parking lot for bicycles outside Gilliam's School, one of the bikes was lying on the asphalt with its tyres cut open and the chain missing. The back wheel spun around slowly in the winter breeze.

---

Roy Mark stood proudly behind the counter of his crowded roadside diner and watched the customers devour their junk food. He had owned this place for about half a year now, and although the first three months had made his wallet feel lighter than a feather, the customers had begun pouring in last October. Apparently, some major road mending had started on a nearby highway, forcing the motorists to take the detour along the diner's highway. Roy knew he would once more find himself in serious financial trouble when the road mending was over and people could return to the other highway, but until then, he was enjoying every second of his life as the owner of a succesful diner. He had even employed two waitresses and an extra chef.

Suddenly, he noticed a grey Honda pulling up outside. This would normally be a welcome addition to the plethora of vehicles in the parking lot, but the four figures stepping out of the car looked disgusting, mildly put. Their clothes were smeared with resinous goo and purplish-brown stains resembling dried blood, and their otherwise pale skin was coloured dark yellow and blue from various bruises.

"_Like ghosts or something,"_ Roy shuddered._ "Reminds me of those three weirdos I saw last year. But I don't have to call the police this time. They won't do anything when the place is so crowded … right?_"

The man's nervous considerations were interrupted by the door bell softly announcing the entrance of the four ghosts.

---

The moment she entered the diner, Beth felt as if every single person in the way too quiet room was staring at her and her companions, jaw dropping and hair standing on end. The only noises were those of a crying infant and a jukebox playing a cheesy pop track. Beth could understand that the newcomers' gory appearances might look shocking to all these ordinary customers, but at the same time, she felt like screaming at them all: "_What the hell do you think you're looking at? Haven't you ever seen blood and bruises before?!_" Of course, this would only attract even more intimidated glares, so she kept quiet.

Kyle murmured something about black coffee and tuna sandwiches. Beth and Shelley nodded approvingly. Kyle purchased the meal from a very pale Roy Mark, while Dean went to the men's room and Beth and Shelley took seats at a table as close to the exit as possible.

Kyle soon joined them with the sandwiches and coffee, and the trio started eating. The rest of the diner crowd seemed to realize that these creepy-looking people were, despite their unusual appearance, just another group of customers getting a meal. And so, they turned their heads back to their own meals and once more drowned the jukebox song and the baby's squeals with their conversations. "Phew. I thought they were gonna keep staring at us like that forever," Beth said.

"Well, that guy behind the counter's still watching us," Kyle mumbled, glancing at the ever-suspicious diner owner.

Dean came back from the restroom and took a seat next to Kyle. They had been eating their sandwiches in silence for half a minute, when a curious female voice behind Beth suddenly asked: "Are you guys from Silent Hill?"

Beth cocked an eye at the waitress standing at their table. She was a slightly plump, black-haired girl in her early twenties. '**Melissa**' was written on her yellow uniform's name-tag. "No, _us guys_ are not from Silent Hill," Beth replied. "We're on our way over there."

"It's just that … You look like you've been through Hell or something. And … is that a hospital uniform you're wearing?" the waitress pointed to the patient t-shirt under Dean's jacket.

Dean hurriedly pulled the jacket closed to hide the suspicious-looking bright green t-shirt. "Of course not," he said.

"You know, we've had some weird customers like you before," Melissa informed. "Roy told me about these three freaks he once met, back when he worked here alone. One of them turned out to be wanted for the murder of her own dad. And then there was that other woman a few months ago - came wandering along the road like a stray kid. She looked really battered up, a bit like you guys. Said her name was Daryl. Anyway, all those people were from Silent Hill …"

Beth finished her sandwich and started sipping the pitchblack coffee. "There's something strange about that place, huh?"

Melissa nodded vehemently. "One day, I'm going to be a journalist, and then I'm going to go do a big article about all the weird stuff going on there. You know, I heard they've even got an evil satanic cult. Cool!" The waitress flashed a smile of morbid fascination.

"Well, good luck finding a magazine that's actually going to publish that story," Beth said as they got up from the table, tipping Melissa.

"Thanks! You've gotta stop by someday and tell me what Silent Hill was like," Melissa said.

"Sure," Beth half-heartedly promised. Behind the counter, Roy Mark breathed a sigh of relief at hearing the door bell announce the departure of the four ghosts. The Honda backed out of the parking lot and drove down the highway, its faint grey colour soon disappearing in the black night.

---

They were a few miles from the isolated town. Gloomy woods surrounded the highway, only illuminated by the car's headlights and a chalkwhite full moon. The misty forest whizzing by looked like something from an old black-and-white horror cliché. Beth could easily imagine a cheesy werewolf jumping out from behind a tree any time now. "I wonder what that cult in Silent Hill is all about?" she muttered, staring at the wipers' monotonous fight against the snowflakes invading the windshield.

Surprisingly, the answer came from Dean: "They worship God. Or rather, _something_ that they _call_ God." His voice was pervaded by loathing. "There's also the Holy Mother and the angel Valtiel, but "God" is the most important."

Beth looked over her shoulder at the man in the backseat. "How do you know all that?"

"I grew up in Silent Hill. Almost everyone in that town knew there was a cult, but no one liked to talk about it. Silent Hill's a popular tourist resort, so things like that have to be kept secret."

"But … what's so bad about this cult? Shouldn't people be allowed to have their own beliefs?" Beth said.

"Not if they push them on others like this cult does. Brainwashing little orphans, circulating drugs, even murdering the people who get in their way … Like they did with _her_." Dean tightened his grip on the crumpled black paper that had once been a beautiful portrait.

"Her?"

"My mother. She worked for this company developing the town to attract more tourists. They built the amusement park, made brochures, funded hotels … And then they started dying, one after the other. It was rumoured the cult had something to do with it, but the police didn't make any headway."

"And what about _her_?" Beth blurted out, starting to get used to Dean's habit of calling his mother _she_ and _her _all the time.

"A car hit her. She died on the spot," Dean replied. "The driver was never arrested. Everyone said it was nothing more than an accident, but I know the cult did it. They just hired someone to make it look like an accident …" The man's voice sounded strangely empty, as if _her_ death was only a distant, indifferent memory. He was perfectly aware that he couldn't go back and change what had happened.

"I, uh … I'm sorry." Beth turned back to face the windshield. The silence of the car was only broken by the wipers sliding back and forth on the pane. Dean gingerly opened his black box and grabbed a pencil to draw on the white side of the paper. He quickly outlined _her_ head and neck, then started sketching the eyes, nose, lips …

---

A/N: Roy Mark and his roadside diner belong to Wrath. Tune in next week, and check my profile for links to sketches of the Bedridden … -E.P.O.


	11. Shelley's relapse

Chapter 11: Shelley's relapse

Shelley woke up on a warm, dusty armchair with a thin blanket covering her curled up legs. The silence around her was only broken by some guys' light snoring and the soft lapping of Toluca Lake's calm northwest shore. The woman's eyelids withdrew from her bleary orbs to reveal a first floor room of Lakeview Hotel. Dean and Kyle were snoring on two cots across the room. In the corner to Shelley's left, Beth slept silently in a wooden desk chair, her head and forearms resting uncomfortably on the cold desk top.

Shelley recalled they had arrived in Silent Hill late last night, probably at 1 A.M or so. Dean, having grown up in the town, easily guided Kyle to the hotel parking lot. They had meandered through the deserted building for a few minutes before finding this room, where they'd just collapsed on the most comfy-looking furniture in sight and fallen asleep the moment their legs were relieved of the arduous task of walking.

"_How long did I sleep?" _Shelley scanned the walls for a clock, but the peach-coloured wallpaper was as bare as her wrists. Through the large windows to her left, she contemplated the view of the snowy, mist-shrouded forest landscape with the icy lake shore. It had to be about 6 or 7 A.M. "_So I must've had six hours of sleep at most. This can't be healthy for my … Well, it can't be healthy for any part of me._"

Yawning, Shelley got up from the armchair and walked across the room as stealthily as possible, trying not to yank her temporary roommates out of their sweet dreams as well. She slipped unobserved into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. The room was dimly lit by a row of small lamps above the mirror and washbasin in the right wall. An oval rug lay on the middle of the white and green floor tiles. A bathtub concealed by a green curtain was situated at the left wall opposite the lamps, and the toilet itself was in the far right corner. Shelley walked up to the bowl and sat down on the cold black seat.

After taking the leak, she walked up to the washbasin and let the faucet water stream over her hands. Above the sink, her mirror image gazed back groggily. Shelley closed her eyes and swivelled her neck. For a brief moment, the only three things still existing in this weary universe were her swivelling neck, her feet on the floor and her hands being washed clean by the tap water. Cool, clear water caressing her skin, slowly turning warmer and thicker, filled with little dry grains, pricking her hands like hot needles …

"What … _no_!" Shelley recoiled from the washbasin, staring at the gooey mass slowly pouring from the faucet. It was obviously anything but normal H2O – more like a yellowish mix of pure fat, milky-white grains of sugar and streaks of blood.

The young woman's face was suddenly obliterated by a familiar, chubby fist bursting out from her gaping mouth. Fortunately, this was only happening to her mirror image as the Devourer smashed its way through the glass surface above the repulsive washbasin.

"_No … no … I killed you in the hospital, tra la fucking la, you're dead …_"

But the Devourer strongly disagreed with that thought. In the blink of an eye, it had wriggled out of the mirror and slid down to the bathroom floor, immediately scrambling to its feet.

Shelley didn't waste any time to grab the green rug and throw it over the creature's deformed head. The Devourer roared in confusion and tore at the rug, but the green wool seemed to be clinging to the sticky grease covering the obese body. As the blinded monster reeled back and forth, Shelley dashed for the door and ripped the small bolt aside. She was about to turn the knob when the a rudimentary hand slammed down on her shoulder and tossed her across the room with awe-inspiring ease.

Shelley landed in the bathtub, pulling the curtain down with her. The bright green fabric covered her body like a shroud. Agony seared from her coccyx and up her spine as her back collided with the bathtub bottom. Letting out a piercing scream, she tore the odd winding sheet away only to find her grotesque enemy towering above her. The Devourer had simply gnawed through the rug, and the remains of the oval of wool hung from its fat torso like a somewhat comic dress. The creature stooped down and sunk its teeth into the edge of the bathtub, effortlessly chewing and swallowing a large portion of the white marble. Paralysed with repulsed fascination and a feeling of deep hopelessness, Shelley could only lie in the tub and watch the Devourer take a bite of the thin curtain before letting its voracious tongue slide up the woman's leg, its mouth twisting wide open to reveal the hideous travesties of human teeth within …

The door burst open with nearly enough force to rip it off its old hinges. The Devourer craned its head around in time to see Kyle aim his handgun and fire the last remaining bullet at its mouth. A couple of rotten, sharpened teeth audibly clattered on the floor tiles in the few silent seconds that followed. Then, the Devourer uttered a deafening, guttural roar and staggered backwards, collapsing on the toilet. Succumbing to the monster's incredible weight, the bowl was smashed to pieces, its yellowish liquid contents washing over the once perfectly clean floor.

"You okay?" Dean ran to the bathtub and extended a hand to pull Shelley up.

"Do I _look_ fucking 'okay'?!" Shelley yelled as she limped out of the room, supported by Beth and Dean. Behind them, the Devourer ingested a few pieces of the toilet bowl before standing from the filthy floor and scrambling towards the doorway. Kyle slammed the door shut and wedged the room's desk chair under the knob. "What _was_ that thing?" he asked Shelley.

"How should I know?" Shelley said, opening the adjacent door to the hotel hallway. "All I know is that we have to get outta here before ---"

Her sentence was interrupted by the Devourer's head smashing through the fragile wood of the bathroom door.

"Fuck!" Shelley screamed, running out of the room and down the cozy woodwork-hallway. With each step she took, a sharp pain throbbed up her back, but she forced her injured and weary body to keep sprinting. Kyle, Beth and Dean followed. The quartet's eight feet pounded into the faded red carpet, while the Devourer's obese arms tore the barricaded door down. The creature skid out of the hotel room, ramming clumsily into the opposite wall. The entire hallway shook, grey clouds of dust and rubble falling from the ceiling.

Shelley burst through the wooden double doors at the end, down a wider hallway, through another door and into the immense lobby. Her lower back pain and the heaving agony in her chest made the far wall seem nigh impossible to reach. Leaning her side against the right wall of the lobby stairway, she half walked, half staggered towards the exit.

"Shit, that thing's gaining on us!" Beth said as she and Kyle laid Shelley's arms around their necks and dragged her exhausted body across the hall. Dean opened the double doors in front of the large music box and they exited the building.

Lakeview Hotel was U-shaped, and the parking lot was located in the square between the south and north wings. Fortunately, Kyle had parked right next to the entrance last night, and there weren't any other vehicles around, so finding Beth's Honda only took a few seconds.

The moment Kyle stuck the car key in the lock, the Devourer burst out from the lobby behind them. Kyle flinched, but managed to turn the key and rip the door open, scrambling to the driver's seat. Dean took the seat next to him, while the two women hurried into the back seat. Shelley and Dean pulled their doors shut one splitsecond before the Devourer flung its enormous body at their side of the car, pressing its obese belly against the pane next to Shelley. A cobweb of cracks spread out in the glass. The vehicle screeched and groaned as a landscape of deep valleys was moulded in the car door. The horribly familiar teeth sunk through an inch of solid metal above Shelley as the abomination began eating its way through the roof.

"Go, dammit, GO!" ordered a panicky Shelley. Kyle started backing out, but the Devourer kept hanging onto the roof. Beth pulled out the pericardial scissors from the hospital and leaned in over Shelley, flicking the switch to roll down the window. "What the hell are you doing? You wanna get us all killed?!" Shelley said.

Beth didn't answer. Instead, she tightened her grip around the surgical instrument and stabbed it into the bloated double chin at the top of the window. The Devourer let out a pathetic squeal and finally went tumbling off the car, landing on the asphalt below. The two right wheels soon came crushing over its limp body as Kyle made a 180 degree turn and drove out of the parking lot. Tire marks filled with blood and matter cut through the otherwise pristine snow.

Shelley leaned back, breathing a deep, relieved sigh. "Thanks. I don't think I'd have made it out of that bathroom if it weren't for you guys …"

"Well, I owed you one after you saved me from that freak in the big chrysalis," Kyle said. Beth and Dean had no idea what he was talking about and didn't bother asking.

They were heading south, down Nathan Avenue to the west of Toluca Lake. The misty waters rippled softly to their left, while the pine woods stretched out across the mountain landscape to their right. You could even catch a glimpse of the idyllic sunrise in the horizon. "Wow, look at that," Kyle said. "Easy to see why this was once a tourist resort. It's beauti--"

"Stop," Dean interrupted.

Kyle frowned, glaring at the man to his right. "What's the--"

"_Stop the car_!"

Kyle looked back out the windshield and immediately slammed the brakes, cursing. Shelley and Beth, having forgotten to put on seatbelts, flew forward and smacked painfully into the backs of the front seats. The car skid two metres before coming to an abrupt halt a few feet from Louise. The young teenager stood motionless in the middle of the road, smiling her usual annoying smile. Kyle was pretty sure the Honda's skidding length should be much longer at this speed, and the slippery layer of ice covering the road should be extending that length several metres. And yet, the car had inexplicably defied these common laws of physics by stopping one splitsecond before it would've crushed the girl's body. Apparently, Louise's shielding powers had interfered once more, miracolously rescuing the kid like some ridicolously obvious _deus ex machina_.

Her voice soon broke the silence, seeping through the cracked, open window next to Shelley: "Why, hello there! I hope I didn't startle you?"

---

A/N: Happy New Year! Yes, I know the Devourer's basically just an Insane Cancer with a face, but it has a reason for popping up in this story. Some of you may already have figured it out - it's way too obvious … Anyway, as a special new years' gift to my readers, I've uploaded a sketch of the Nymph monster (the one with the chrysalis). You'll find the link in my profile, enjoy ... And don't forget to tune in next year, -E.P.O.


	12. Hope and faith

Chapter 12: Hope and faith

_Now does my project gather to a head:_

_My charms crack not, my spirits obey, and time_

_Goes upright with his carriage._

-The Tempest

Kyle was the first to step out of the Honda. The other three passengers followed suit, shaking themselves as the cozy warmth of the car's interior was replaced by the bitter cold and biting winds of the January morning. Dense pine forest grew along both sides of the road. To the group's left, a small wooden sign read '**Toluca Lake – Keep the Nature**' next to a larger sign with an image of the beaming, colourful ponys of Lakeside Amusement Park's merry-go-round.

"What do you think of my hometown so far?" Louise asked, still standing on the middle of the road and not about to move an inch – not that there was anything dangerous about that; the town had obviously been void of traffic for years.

"It looks … kind of desolate," Kyle replied. His view of the vexing girl was momentarily obscured by his own breath, floating up from his mouth in grey puffs as he spoke.

Louise let out a brief, amused laugh. "_Kind of_ is an understatement. There's only me, Philip and the four of you here."

"Philip? Where's he?" Dean inquired.

"On his way to the church," Louise said. "He has to pick up something important there. Anyway, that brings me to the instructions I promised to give you once you'd arrived in this town. You're not actually going to help me and Philip with the ritual itself – you're going to find the items necessary to perform it."

"Splendid," Beth grumbled. "So what's on your shopping list?"

Louise was not amused. "Only two items in fact," she replied. "A red book, located in the house next to Bluecreek Apartments on Munson Street, and a black goblet, which should be somewhere in the Historical Society."

"A 'goblet' and a 'red book'?" Shelley quoted, folding the map to tuck it into her pocket. "But how are we supposed to find that?"

Louise shrugged. "I don't know exactly where you'll find them, but Philip said they're located somewhere in those buildings. I _can_ tell you what they look like, though. The red book's very old and falling apart. "Crimson Ceremony" is written on the cover. As for the goblet, it's made of black obsidian and has a serpent carved around the stem. That's all I know."

"And if we find them for you, we can get the hell out of here?" Shelley said.

"Yes." Louise's smile grew wider. "You can get out of the town, and your world will return to its old self."

"I can hardly wait for that to happen. Let's go." Kyle walked around the car towards the driver's seat, but stopped in his tracks a few feet from the door. Letting out a yelp of shock and pain, he stumbled back as if punched in the stomach by an unseen fist.

"Oh no …" Beth reached out a shaking hand and felt her fingers touch some kind of invisible barrier in the middle of the clear air. It felt cold and slimy. She could even see little blurry rings spread out from her fingertips like ripples on a water surface. The mystified woman walked across the road a few times, tracing the invisible wall. In an S-shaped curve, it seperated Shelley and Kyle on the west side from Beth, Dean, Louise and the car on the east side.

"In order to find the items faster, I thought it would be best for the four of you to split up in two teams," Louise explained.

"That's what they always do in horror flicks," Beth pointed out. "Makes it easier for the monsters to pick them off one by one."

"Maybe so, but you don't have a choice," Louise said.

"Bitch."

Either Louise didn't hear Kyle's monosyllabic retort, or she didn't care about lack of popularity right now. "Shelley and Kyle can visit the Historical Society. It's just up the road behind you – can't miss it. Beth and Dean'll go to the house next to the apartment building on Munson Street," she said.

"But how are we supposed to find that place? We don't have a map or anything," Beth protested.

"Dean grew up here, remember?" Louise gestured to the man on Beth's side of the barrier.

Dean nodded. "I know that house. It's the Baldwins' place."

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" Louise said.

"Err, I have one more question for you," Shelley said. "Why did it have to be _us_? Couldn't you have found anyone else to get the items for you?"

Louise hesitated a few seconds before answering. "Yes, I suppose I could have used someone else than the two of you, and ---"

"_Two_?" Kyle blurted out. "There's four of us …"

"I know. Originally, Philip and I had intended that only Beth and Dean would help us," the girl replied. "But you and Shelley somehow got caught up in Silent Hill's realm as well. I have no idea why …" Her tone and the look on her face added the unheard last part of that sentence: "_… and I don't really care._"

Beth sighed resignedly. She felt like every word Louise had uttered since they first met in the hospital elevator had only made the situation seem more and more puzzling. "Why did it have to be me and Dean, then?"

"I thought you'd need someone who knew the town like the back of his hand. Dean was the only former Silent Hill resident living in Hooper Lake City. As for you, Beth, we had met before. You just seemed so … fitting," Louise explained.

"What are you talking about? I'd never seen you before I got trapped in that fucked-up hospital," Beth said.

"Ah yes, I figured you wouldn't remember our first encounter. After all, it has been about a year since that took place … Anyway, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you stop wasting time here and fetch those items for the ritual," Louise ordered, putting an end to the conversation.

The confused quartet exchanged brief parting words and then walked and drove off in opposite directions - Shelley and Kyle footed it up Nathan Avenue, while Beth and Dean drove east in the Honda. Louise stood still on the middle of the avenue, watching the vehicle and the bodies turn into distant shadows rapidly vanishing in the mist. She pulled out an old, crumpled photo from her pocket and gazed at the blurry image. Two brown-haired 5 and 8-year-old girls sitting on wooden swings in a backyard beamed to her from the idyllic world of the photo. They had been so happy back then …

Philip's promise echoed through her mind: "_After the ritual, God will make sure the two of you can live together happily for as long as you want._"

"_I'll save you, Sharon,_" Louise thought and tucked the photo back into her pocket. "_It won't be long now._"

---

Beth's car cut through the formless fog that seemed to perpetually envelop Nathan Avenue. Even Dean, who had been here so many times before, had a hard time remembering how the desolate Rosewater Park gliding by to their left could ever have looked beautiful in the sunshine of a summer morning.

"What are you drawing?" Beth asked. Dean's pencils and the rough sketch still rested next to him on the seat.

"It's _her_, my mom … again."

"Oh." Beth remembered the incident in the hospital office - how she had, in a moment of frustration, torn the paper away under his pencil, leaving an ugly dark streak on the portrait of the late mother. But Beth wasn't going to apologize until Dean had offered _his_ apologies for hitting her like that.

"Tell her what happened in the hospital," Mister suggested, referring to the drawing that had come to life only to be covered by black streaks.

"Why would she need to know about that? And besides, she would never believe you," Doctor said.

"But she's seen so many weird things in this place, too. Why would the talking portrait be any harder to believe?"

"Because she knows what they thought about him," Doctor replied dryly. "That he is 'insane'."

Looking for something to distract his thoughts with, Dean opened the glove compartment and pulled out the bulky Shakespeare collection Beth had put there last night. "Have you started reading that play yet? What was it … The Tempest?"

Beth nodded. "I read about half of it when we were driving to the town."

"What's it about?"

"Well, it starts with a ship that gets wrecked in a tempest. The crew makes it to a desert island, though. Then there's this wizard called Prospero living there. He conjured up the tempest to bring the people on the ship to his island. Oh, and he has all these weird spirits that torment the stranded crew …"

"Spirits?" Dean said. "You mean, like demons and monsters?"

"No, they're not really evil. Except Caliban, and he's not controlled by Prospero."

"Turn right," Dean guided Beth as an intersection manifested itself from the fog.

The woman slowed down and moved the wheel in said direction. The car turned about 90 degrees and left Nathan Avenue to head down Munson Street. "Anyway, what made you think they're demons?" she said.

"Well, Louise told you this play had something to do with all this, right? Maybe she thinks she's Prospero, and this weird world we've ended up in is her island."

Beth was silent for a few seconds, dumbfounded by Dean's theory. "Yeah …" She slowly nodded. "Yeah, that would sort of make sense. I have to read the end of that play sometime to find out how those stranded people get off the island."

"If they ever do," Dean added.

---

Approximately two miles from Munson Street, on the opposite side of the lake, Father Philip Blackmer walked through the chapel behind his cult's church. His creaky footsteps echoed throughout the hallways, ludicrously loud in this silence.

As he passed by one of the few windows of the building, he noticed two Bedridden creatures meandering along the road in the distance. The priest shuddered at the disgusting sight and pulled the curtains closed, but the memory stayed in his mind. Those beaks strapped to their rudimentary faces, the bony legs bent backwards at the knees …

"_Stop it. Don't let them distract you._"

Philip turned from the window and walked on down the corridors. He had a job to do, a part to play, and he wouldn't let any of these ignorant people's delusions hold him up further. In fact, the sheer importance of what he could accomplish using Louise and Sharon almost intimidated him. Sometimes, he wished the responsibility had fallen to someone else …

But he had to do this – he was the head priest of the Valtiel sect, after all. Apart from mediating between the Holy Mother sect and the Saint Ladies sect, the Valtiel priests were also known to be far closer to God through their intensive prayers and vast knowledge of rituals. And now he had the chance to perform a ritual with the most important purpose of them all – to awaken God. He should be proud of what he was doing for this truly godforsaken world.

And yet, he felt afraid.

The things he had experienced so far – including those Bedridden abominations – disturbed him. Not because of their grotesque appearances, but because of the future they could be indicating. If the second salvation was drawing near, shouldn't there be signs of beauty instead?

"_This is just the manifestation of Louise's mind. It does not represent Paradise,_" he told himself.

However, if God was making these things appear, would She do the same to every one of her followers once She had arrived? If so, Her world might not be the same "paradise" it had been during the first salvation. Since then, the souls of mankind had been tainted and corrupted. Humanity had developed from an innocent little child to a weary, grim adult. Wouldn't that influence the new world God was bringing forth?

"_No, stop! Those questions are completely pointless. You know this is the only right path to follow._"

Philip turned a corner and opened the first door to his left, entering his humble chapel home. The arrangement was Spartan to say the least. Only a cheap bed, desk and bookcases filled with scriptures decorated the narrow room. A door to Philip's immediate right led to his private bathroom – one of the many privileges allowed to head priests only.

Not bothering to close the door behind him, Philip made a beeline for his bed and crouched down to produce a cardboard box hidden underneath. He swiftly opened the top, revealing several plastic bags containing a fine powder. This would hopefully wipe away those horrible thoughts of doubt he had sinfully nurtured. Philip grabbed one of the bags, ripped it open and buried his nose in the white surface. The sugar-like grains announced their entry into his system by pricking his nostrils. He soon replaced the bag and pushed the box back under the bed.

The man stood, walked up to his desk and pulled the lowest drawer out. It contained nothing more than a small bottle filled with an oily white liquid. '**For the Great Resurrection**' was written on the label. Philip slipped the bottle into his coat pocket and left the room. Walking back down the deserted corridors, he could already feel the powder kicking in. As usual when Father Philip doubted the necessity of God's salvation, White Claudia came to reinforce his faith and save him with her endless compassion. The priest's lips broadened in a sickly grin.

"_Thank God._"

---

A/N: Yep, you were all right about "fat albert". Now I feel dumb for writing that obvious symbolism … Wolf: No, I've heard way too many bad things about the graphic novel to dare buy it. Snikers: Will do. I'm starting to feel likea fanfic-writing David Lynch ...Tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	13. The Baldwin residence

Chapter 13: The Baldwin residence

The entrance to the house on Munson Street was a small, unremarkable door in a grey wall with barbed-wire running along the top. Beth parked next to the narrow sidewalk, and she and Dean stepped out of the Honda. "I used to be afraid of this house when I was a kid," Dean said, slamming the car door.

"You are still afraid," Doctor reminded him.

"Everyone said it was haunted," Dean continued.

"Haunted by who?" Beth said as she walked up to the brown metal door in the concrete wall. There wasn't any kind of knob or handle, but fortunately, it was already ajar.

"Mr. Baldwin and his daughter Amy. She died on his birthday – fell out of a window - and his wife left him half a year later. I heard he killed himself afterwards," Dean informed.

With half-numb fingertips, Beth pushed the door open, revealing a decrepit front yard on the other side. A jungle of weed rose above the thick snow. The entrance to the house itself was a pair of elaborately carved double doors in the wall of a short veranda. Huge cobwebs were suspended over the shadowy corners.

"Yeah, it's a haunted mansion allright," Beth said.

They walked across the cramped yard and up to the porch. Beth expected the double doors to creak ominously, but they turned out to open without the slightest noise. The duo stepped into an entrance hall with a cobweb-shrouded chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. Two narrow balconies ran along the left and right walls at the second floor, four wooden doors at their ends.

A torn page of ruled, yellow paper lay on the table on the ground floor's middle. Beth picked it up and looked at the date. "This was written five years ago. Looks like a kid's handwriting," she commented and began reading aloud: "_Dear Diary, today is my burthday and Dad gave me this diary caus I am so good at writing in school. My name is Louise Barkin and today I am 8 yeers old. My dads name is Joseph and my moms name is Patricia. They are vary nice to me. My sisters name is Sharon and I love her vary much._" Below the entry was a drawing of the typical family of four stick figures, standing in front of their crude house. A yellow sun in the upper left corner smiled wryly.

"Was that from … Louise's diary?" Dean said.

"Of course it's her diary. I have no idea what it's doing here, though." Beth frowned and placed the yellow scrap back on the table.

Entering through the double doors opposite the house entrance, Beth and Dean found themselves in a wide living room. Couches and easy chairs were gathered around a coffee table. A fireplace in the back wall was covered with an iron plate, the terse explanation '**Do Not Use**' scrawled with chalk on the black surface. To secure the plate further, a padlock hung from the left side. It had five number-wheels, each with all nine digits, for vertically lining up the code.

"Well, we might as well start looking for that red book," Beth suggested and began scanning the bookshelves. There were plenty of poem collections and travel guides with red backs, but Beth doubted any of those were necessary for some obscure ceremony.

"I don't think we're going to find something like that just lying about in an ordinary living room," Dean said, trying the other doors. The first one had a broken lock, but the second one opened into a dining room about half as large as the living room. It was cozily decorated with relaxing landscape paintings, a grandfather clock and numerous porcelain dogs and cats on the antique sideboard. The dining table was covered by a white cloth and set with three lit candles and 26 plates.

Mister and Dean gasped, while Doctor remained calm, as the trio's communal eyes fell on the unappetizing dinner on the plates. "Uh, Beth? I … I think you s-should …"

But Beth had already forgotten about the bookshelves and stood next to Dean in the door frame, staring at the plates. The table was shaped in a long rectangle, with one golden plate at the far short end, eleven normal plates at each long side and the last three plates at the nearest end. The golden plate was the only perfectly clean and empty one. The rest were stained with that bright red liquid which Beth and Dean had become so horribly familiar with during the last 24 hours.

Three of the plates – two in the far corners next to the gold plate and one on the middle of the nearest table end – were utterly filled with blood. Weird lumps floated on the middle of the crimson surfaces.

Beth stepped closer, the reek of rotting flesh slowly entering her nostrils. She let her index fingertip touch one of the stained plates for a brief, but sickening moment. The blood felt warm on her pale skin. "Ugh, it's fresh," she said. "Talk about soup du jour"

As soon as the words had left her mouth, Beth inwardly scolded herself for making such a dumb joke about something so seriously fucked-up. How could she act coolly faced with these horrors? "_It's this place, Beth, it's starting to get to you …_"

'Soup du jour' wasn't part of even Doctor's vocabulary, so Dean didn't get Beth's dry comment, not that he was too interested. "What are those … things, in the middle of the plates?" he asked, pointing to the lumps floating on the three soup surfaces.

"How should I know?" Beth gingerly reached out and poked one of the lumps. It twitched spasmodically and raised its muscular tip, saliva dripping into the soup. Beth let out a brief shriek and recoiled from the table.

"It's … it's a human tongue," Dean said. "Three human tongues in three soups of blood."

"What the fuck have they been up to in here?" Beth burst out.

Dean shrugged in reply.

"Let's get out of here." The duo returned to the living room and Beth walked past the padlocked fireplace to the last door they hadn't tried yet. It opened into an empty room with a staircase to her immediate right. Beth froze at the sound of a little girl's laughter and running footsteps echoing from a landing above. The woman's wide eyes scanned upwards, but the staircase was deserted.

Beth knit her brows and followed the stairs up. Dust whirled off the banister as her left hand slid along the dark wood. "Good thing Shelley didn't come with us," she remarked.

"Shelley?" Dean said behind her.

"That woman with the fear of stairways. Don't you remember her?"

"Oh, yeah. I just didn't …" Dean trailed off, noticing the book and house map placed on a step between the first and second landings.

Beth took the map of the Baldwin mansion and tucked it in her pocket, thinking it would come in handy later. She then picked up the book and glanced at the brown cover. "Well, it's not that red book we're looking for. This looks like a childrens' fairy tale collection."

The duo proceeded up the stairs to a square room with one wooden door in each wall. Dean tried the doors while Beth checked out the fairy tale book. "There's a story here called 'The King's Dinner'. _Once upon a time, there was an old and clever King who needed some new knights to assist in his wars and quests,_" Beth read aloud. "_Many young men from all over the kingdom showed up at the King's castle, hoping that they were strong and brave enough to be knighted. The King picked 25 of these men and invited them for a grand dinner that evening._

_The King sat at one end of the table, and an empty gold plate was set in front of him. The 25 men sat in the right alphabetic order around the table – number 1 to the King's right and number 25 to the King's left. And the plates in front of the men contained blood and human tongues instead of normal soup._"

Dean, who had now found that all the doors were locked, turned around with a surprised look on his face. "That's just like what we found in the dining room!"

Beth nodded and held out the book, so they could both silently read the rest of the tale:

**The men stared at the dinner in disgust. One of them asked why the King's plate was empty. **

"**Sadly, I have fallen a tad ill and do not feel hungry tonight," the King answered. "But this is my favorite dish, so please, eat your fill."**

**The men instantly began to eat the tongues and drink the blood, pretending to enjoy the repulsive taste. They told the King that it was the most delicious food they had ever eaten. Only three of them refused to touch the strange meal.**

**When the dinner was over, the King said that he would only knight the three men who had not eaten. **

"**Why?!" said the men who had eaten up. They were very disappointed and angry.**

"**Because I would rather have good, honest souls by my side than despicable liars," the King explained.**

**The three men were then knighted, while the remaining 22 were punished by execution. The King had their tongues cut off and their blood tapped, so it could all be served for dinner the next time he needed to find new knights.**

**The End**

"Huh? What the hell kind of fairy tale is that?!" Beth said.

"It is not merely a fairy tale," Doctor began. Dean listened to the Doctor's explanation and a smile of understanding appeared on his face. He hurried down the stairs, through the living room and back to the macabre dining table.

"What are you doing?" Beth asked.

Dean's reply was nothing more than silence. He slowly walked around the table and pointed to the first plate to the right of the golden one. It was filled with the scarlet soup, and the human tongue lay in the middle. "_The men sat in the right alphabetic order around the table – number 1 to the King's right, and number 25 to the King's left,_" he quoted, pointing to the other blood-filled plate to the left of the gold plate. "That's 1, and that's 25. Then there's just one knight left who didn't touch his soup …"

Dean walked back to the other end of the table, counting the plates until he reached the third and last one that still contained the unappetizing dinner. "Number 11. So it's 1, 11, 25." He rushed past Beth and back to the living room, where he crouched down in front of the padlocked fireplace. "1, 11, 25," he repeated, turning the wheels to line up the five digits.

The lock clicked and the iron plate swung open.

"Well, it's clever that you found a way to unlock it, but a fire's really the last thing we need right now," Beth said. "Err … What are you looking at?"

Dean had stuck his head into the fireplace and was gazing upwards. Beth crouched down beside him and peeked into the chimney. It turned out there was a rusty ladder leading to an opening in the wall farther up. Dean crawled into the fireplace and out of Beth's range of vision.

"Hey, wait for me!" Beth followed him through the chimney. The bars felt warm and fragile as she used them to climb up the shaft. She couldn't help noticing the brownish handprints on each of the bars – too small to have been left by Dean. "_And that colour – it's like dried blood …_" Beth shuddered and started climbing faster.

The room at the top turned out to be a small garden. A dismal grey gleam filtered through the fog above and seeped through the skylight pane to illuminate the acacia plants. Dean kneeled in front of a gravestone at the back wall and read the epitaph. "I think this is where he buried his daughter," he concluded.

"And dug her up again?" Beth said, gesturing to the deep, rectangular hole before the headstone. An empty child-size coffin rested on the bottom. Small footprints of dried blood led from the hole to the ladder.

Dean nodded, staring at the contrast of pitchblack soil in the middle of green grass. Suddenly, he noticed a third colour lying in the grass – a yellowish scrap of paper. He picked it up and felt a piece of warm metal taped to the back. Turning the paper around, he carefully removed the small key and read the tag.

"What's that for?" Beth asked.

"It says 'First Floor Study'," Dean said, tucking the key into his pocket. "And this piece of paper looks like another part of Louise's diary …"

Beth walked up behind Dean to read the torn page over his shoulder. This entry was from four years ago, about one year after Louise had gotten the diary for her birthday.

**Dear Diary, today we went to Lakeside amusement park but mom and dad were yelling a lot at eechother so it wasnt very fun. Dad said Mom is scruwing around, I wonder what that meens? Sharon wont sleep in her room anymore becaus she is afraid there is a monster in the bed. I dont think theres a monster there. but I let her sleep in the chair in my room.**

There was another drawing below the entry, depicting a bed with two pillows and a teddy bear. The words '**its safe Sharon!**' were written at the end of an arrow pointing to the mattress. "The Bedridden …" Beth shivered, putting two and two together. "_In the Otherworld, people's thoughts and ideas take physical shape,_" Louise had explained. "_Their most wonderful dreams and worst nightmares just appear all of a sudden._"

"What's the Bedridden?" Dean said, vaguely curious.

Beth's mind raced back to the current situation and she realized she had spoken the creature's nickname out loud. "You really don't want to know," she answered and produced the map of the house. "Now, which room was that key for?"

"The study, on the first floor."

Beth's index finger traced their route on the map – through the dining room, across a hallway and into the room marked '**Study**'. "That shouldn't be too hard to find," she said, tucked the map into her pocket and climbed back down the ladder.

The duo quickly made their way back to the dining room. The 26 plates were now perfectly clean, and it was nigh impossible to picture to oneself how they could ever have contained a cannibalistic meal. Reflections of the three candles' flames danced on the white china. "It's … gone," Beth breathed, pointing out the obvious. "All that blood …"

Dean nodded and walked up to the door to their immediate right, turning the knob. He looked back over his shoulder, annoyed. "Are you gonna keep standing there?"

Beth tore herself away from the astonishing sight and followed Dean through the door. The T-shaped hallway beyond was located just south of the entrance hall. The door adjacent to the dining room wouldn't open, but Dean unlocked it with the key he had found in the hidden garden.

The study was a dark, dusty room with an even more depressing atmosphere than the rest of the house. Bookshelves filled with bulky encyclopedias and scriptures lined the walls. Beth started examining the tomes while Dean stepped past a half-open door in the back wall and entered what was marked as the bedroom on the house map. However, there was no furniture in there apart from a single table in the middle. Torn gift-wrapping paper, an empty box and a birthday card lay on the mahogany surface.

Meanwhile, Beth had noticed that one of the upper shelves only consisted of 26 books, each with a single letter on its back. They were clearly placed in alphabetic order, starting with A at the left end and Z at the far right. Beth began pulling out random books. They all stopped about an inch from the shelf and wouldn't move farther no matter how hard she pulled. "_It has to be another combination lock …_"

"Dean, what were those numbers for the padlock?"

"1, 11, 25," the man said, returning to the study from the bedroom that lacked a bed.

… _The men sat in the right alphabetic order around the table – number 1 to the King's right, and number 25 to the King's left …_

Beth counted up to the letters of the alphabet.

Number 1, A.

Number 11, M.

Number 25, Y.

"Amy," Beth muttered. "Of course." She pushed back all the books she had randomly pulled out, and proceeded to pull the three correct books – spelling the name of Ernest Baldwin's late daughter.

'_Click_'

The entire shelf swung out and revealed another shelf concealed inside the wall. The books on the secret shelf were far more interesting than the rest of the room's written works combined. Beth ran her eyes over titles like '**The Descent of the Holy Mother**' and '**Tome of the Seer**', until she found a faded red back on the middle of the shelf.

Feeling somewhat like Eve plucking a forbidden apple, Beth reached for the shelf and snatched the unholy book. Her suspicion was confirmed when she saw the two words on the cover.

**Crimson Ceremony**

---

A/N: Hmm, I'm not sure disembodied tongues can float in real life … but what the hell, this is Silent Hill. Oh, and if you're dying to see some new monsters, I promise the next chapter will introduce a new species … So tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	14. Grim Reaper's harvest

Chapter 14: Grim Reaper's harvest

"Ask her."

"I don't think you should …"

"Ask her."

"Why? You've come so far …"

"_Ask. Her._"

"But what if Louise …"

"ASK HER!"

"Beth, there's something I have to ask you," Dean said as they were walking back through the dining room. In addition to being truly interested in Beth's answer, the man wanted to stop Doctor and Mister's argument before things got out of control.

"Huh? It's changed again," Beth said in an almost casual tone, referring to the white cloth-covered table. As weird as it might seem, she was getting used to things just appearing and disappearing with neither explanation nor reason. This time, a single silver platter had been placed on the nearest end. A shotgun rested on the platter, fully loaded with six shots.

"Well, I was just thinking …" Dean began.

"No, _I _was thinking, you credit-stealing fool," Doctor grumbled.

"… that, maybe, we shouldn't let them get the book."

Beth froze, dumbfounded. "_What? _You think we shouldn't give them some stupid little book," she held up their newly acquired copy of 'Crimson Ceremony', "when it's our only chance to get out of this hell?!"

Dean winced at the somewhat loud reply. "Ah, I see there isn't much _credit_ to steal, anyway," Doctor said.

"What if there's something wrong about this ritual they want the book for?" Dean continued. "What if those things we've seen, the monsters and the other worlds … What if the ritual's going to make them _spread?_"

Beth opened her mouth to retort, but abruptly closed it again. Disturbing images started to manifest themselves in her mind. "_He could be right. The 'Awakening of God' that priest was talking about – what if all humans' thoughts and memories came to life as well?_"

… _twenty score men and seven thousand beasts …_

Beth glanced down at the book in her left hand. Old and falling apart. Several pages torn or completely missing. The cover's colour was more like a faded red than 'crimson'. Perfectly ordinary. Not your typical occult tool for spreading Inferno on earth.

"We have no idea what that ritual is going to do," Beth said, trying to reassure Dean and herself at the same time. "Maybe it's totally harmless – a religious oddity or something. Let's just give this book to Louise and Philip, so we can get the hell outta here. I'll bet Shelley and Kyle would agree."

"But you don't know what that sect is _like_," Dean protested. "I've heard all kinds of sick things about them - they want the world to be 'cleansed with fire', and sinners will …"

Tired and exasperated, Beth cut the man off: "You know what I think? I think you're just angry because your mother died in a normal car accident, and you're trying to blame it on a fucking _cult,_ so you can …"

"Leave _her _out of this!" Dean's voice was getting thick and shaky, and his fingers were curling up to form chalkwhite fists.

Beth sighed and turned to face the table. "Sorry. Let's just stop discussing this. We're gonna give them their 'Crimson Ceremony', and hope it won't have any serious consequences. Not like we have much of a choice, anyway." She picked up the shotgun from the platter and walked on into the living room. The gun looked a tad hard to use, and Beth had very little experience with firearms, but it should at least prove more lethal than the pericardial scissors from the hospital.

"Wait," Dean said, entering the room behind her. "Can't we at least read some of the book first?"

Beth paused, afraid of what they might find. "Yeah. Good idea." She raised the book to gaze at the somewhat tattered cover. It looked at least a century old, and it was probably a miracle in itself that it had survived to this day. It lacked the name of an author or a publication company – there was nothing but the title. Crimson Ceremony.

Beth's fingers lingered at the edge of the cover, hesitating to open it. "_Calm down,_" she thought to herself. "_You're not in a goddamn Lovecraft story. This is just a book. No matter what's written inside, it's just words. Harmless combinations of letters forming harmless sentences. Just open it._"

But she couldn't.

"The fuck?" Beth mumbled as she struggled to pull the cover up. It simply wouldn't open.

"Let me try," Dean grabbed the book and tugged at the cover in vain. It was as if the damn thing had been glued shut, or filled with thin magnets relentlessly attracting each other.

Both relief and fear washed over Beth. She felt glad the contents would remain a mystery – at least to her and Dean – but at the same time, the dread of the unknown clutched her mind under its cold, bony fingers. "I give up," Dean said, handing the book to Beth before adding: "And I still don't think we can trust it to the likes of Philip and Louise. Normal books don't stay closed like that …"

"There's a totally natural explanation," Beth said in her ever weakening voice of reason. She left the living room and proceeded through the entrance hall. "This book had probably --- _shit!_" The sentence trailed off to a high-pitched yell, as her gaze moved upwards and found something that could definitely never be justified with a 'natural explanation'.

The two creatures were perched on the railings of the short balconies. Their bodies were reminiscent of lean men, but their skin colour was a sickly shade of yellow. The skin itself looked ragged and shredded, like the straw constituting a scarecrow's body.

However, the torso and limbs had a normal human shape, with the visually jarring exception of the head and hands. Hanging limp from both palms, the three middle fingers were melded together through some hideous mutation. The head and neck had also sunk into one undiscernible shape, from which two grey eyes peeked out in utterly wrong areas of the already deformed face. It looked like a particularly bizarre Picasso portrait come to life.

But the most horrifying part would undoubtedly be the three wooden stakes protruding from the rudimentary fists and head. Each stake was about three feet long, with silvery blades jutting out from their ends. Beth's jaw dropped as the woman understood the nature of the primitive weapons.

"_Scythes. Just like the Grim Reaper._"

_Upon the hill where the light descended …_

The Reapers started intoning with low, sputtering voices, which sounded oddly muffled - as if coming from a mouth buried deep inside the deformed head. Neither Beth nor Dean could understand the muffled chant, but a few clear words stuck out: "_… lies and the mist - be obeyed – merciless sun - withering flower and …_"

… _the beast intoned his song._

The Reapers took off from the banister and sailed through the dusty air. They latched their six scythes onto the chandelier, sending old cobwebs falling to the floor like little parachutes. The chandelier soon followed, pulling a large portion of the ceiling with it. Beth screamed and ran along the south wall, closely followed by Dean.

In the middle of the room, the chandelier and ceiling chunk landed on the table with a deafening crash. The three were crushed and merged into one enormous heap of rubble, bent metal and splintered wood. On top of this heap, two grim figures stood in the rising cloud of dust.

Beth and Dean ripped the double doors open and dashed through the front yard. The thorny weed scraped against their trouser legs, and the cold air snapped at their faces and hands. These minor irritations, however, were nothing compared to the agony awaiting them if they failed to outrun the Reapers.

The scythe-wielding monsters burst onto the porch and scanned the yard with their hideously misplaced grey eyes. Their prey had already made it through the door to Munson Street. "_… they are my blessings,_" the creatures chanted, voices rising with their growing wrath. Abruptly, with no run-up whatever, they took off from the veranda and soared across the yard in a physically impossible leap.

Beth stood on the sidewalk with her hand on the car door, ready to open it and dive in to the driver's seat. That plan was ruined, however, as the Reapers came flying over the barbed-wire-adorned top of the mansion wall and landed on the Honda's hood with a cacophonic screech of metal grinding against metal.

"… _and all that is me in the place that is silent …_"

The roof collapsed and sunk onto the seats, and the Reapers swung their arms down, jabbing the two scythes into the four tires. The blades easily pierced the thick rubber. The creatures' movements were remarkably synchronized, almost mirroring each other while they destroyed both sides of the car. Windows shattered, the hood was crushed, and the car was soon reduced to a miserable wreck. It reeked of spilt gasoline, and a lush forest of flames grew and spread across the smashed metal.

Till now, Beth had been standing hypnotized on the sidewalk, shocked by the destruction of her trusty old vehicle. She finally remembered the danger of the imminent explosion and sprinted down towards the Katz Street intersection. Dean followed, the duo's hands clutching as if they'd fall into an abyss of dread and hopelessness if they let go for one splitsecond.

That was when Dean's hand slipped out.

"Dean!" The woman skidded to a halt on the icy road and spun around, only to find that her companion had been pulled back by one of the Reapers.

The abomination sat perched on the top edge of the bumper, it's scythe-lengthened arms wrapped around the man's chest. He hadn't been severely wounded yet, but the look in his twitching green orbs was easy to interpret: The Reaper was going to harvest his life now, and Beth could do nothing but run away, lest her name would be next on the list.

Beth stayed, however. She stayed and raised the shotgun with shaking hands, making a ridicolously inexperienced attempt to aim the heavy weapon.

The Reaper raised its left arm while still holding Dean with its right scythe-handle. The man squirmed and kicked frantically, but to no avail. "_… and the last struggles of the dying man,_" the Reapers intoned, "_they are my BLESSINGS!_"

"Fuck," Beth breathed, fumbling with the trigger. "Come on, dammit …"

The left blade reached the top of its vertical curve and slashed through the misty air, descending toward Dean's torso.

A shot rang out. The Reaper was instantly knocked backwards by the force of the bullets. Its muscular torso crashed through the windshield, and the Reaper landed head-first on the driver's seat. Its twin monstrosity jerked its gaze up from the car to focus on the female assailant farther down the road.

Dean sprinted from the car and up to his last-minute saviour. The unscathed Reaper hopped across the car and down the road, arms and scythes stretched out to offer a deadly embrace. Beth fired two more shots. One of the bullets plunged into the car and thus assumed the role of the proverbial last straw to break this vehicle's back.

Compared to the town streets' usual silence, the explosion made a razorsharp contrast.

The Honda unfolded into a rapidly growing flower with orange petals of fire. If the car hadn't been utterly destroyed by the Reapers, it was certainly wrecked now. A mighty tower of black smoke rose through the milky-white fog and up to the heavens.

Fortunately, Beth and Dean had made it to a safe distance from the explosion. They stared with gaping mouths at the wreck.

One of the Reapers came staggering out, its movements slow, pathetic and enveloped in flames. Even its voice was losing all coherence and energy: "_Even u-u-under sun and proud and p-proud a-a-and … blessings of the d-d-dying ma-man's wine call upon m-me … and all that is me … is me … is me …_" The creature fell in a burning heap, and its voice trailed off into the unmistakeable silence of death.

Beth breathed a sigh of relief. The Reapers were dead, thanks to her and the shotgun. Of course, she'd have to get a new vehicle if she ever escaped this town, but the loss of the Honda didn't bother her much at the moment. Right now, she was just relieved to have survived the twin creatures' attack.

"That was close, huh?" Beth said, flashing Dean an exhausted smile.

The man simply stared at her with a look of cold emptiness in his eyes. His face looked as white as the surrounding fog, sweat glinting on his forehead. "What's wrong?" Beth asked.

Dean groaned and collapsed on the middle of the road.

"Shit!" Beth knelt beside the man and picked up his wrist to check the pulse. A fast beat came under her fingers. She scanned the man's limp body to find a cause for his condition. Her eyes soon locked onto a crimson stain on the left side of his coat. A round hole was torn in the fabric, and pierced flesh was visible on the other side. Blood oozed from the wound and down to the icy asphalt below.

Beth gasped as the epiphany hit her.

"You … you've …" A mix of saliva and blood seeped from the corner of Dean's quivering mouth.

"Yes," Beth nodded, fighting back the vomit that threatened to rise in her throat.

She had shot him.

---

A/N: It's been a while since the last evil cliffhanger, hasn't it? Well, better keep the tradition going … Check my profile for a link to my Reaper sketch. And don't forget to tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	15. Items retrieved

Chapter 15: Items retrieved

Beth had almost no experience with aiming guns – hence the bullet that had hit Dean in lieu of the Reaper - let alone how to treat a gunshot wound. She gingerly pulled the man's coat off his body and rolled it up into an impromptu bandage. She tried wrapping it around his torso and applied pressure, but to no avail.

The damage had been done. The bullet had pierced Dean Frost's stomach. Within the next fifteen minutes or so, gastric acid would enter his thoracic cavity, slowly but surely ruining his feeble body from within.

The irony of the situation overwhelmed Beth. Despite all the formidable creatures roaming the town, Dean had been killed by a human being. "_Me. Elizabeth Kalember, murderer._"

Contemplating this new title, Beth couldn't hold down the vomit anymore. She slumped down on hands and knees, the taste of bile invading her mouth. Her tearful eyes could only watch as a dark yellowish colour manifested itself on the middle of the asphalt below.

"Murderer. Murderer. Murderer." She said it out loud like some bizarre meditation mantra.

"_It was an accident,_" said her voice of reason. "_An accidental shot. You can't blame it on yourself._" But the tears and vomit splattered onto the asphalt told a different story.

"I'm sorry," Beth said to the dying man. The two words were barely audible through the thick filter of weeping that still pervaded her voice. Even if she could control her voice, Dean didn't look conscious enough to comprehend the apology.

The street was now completely silent, save for the sound of the burning car wreck, Dean's ragged gasps of agony and Beth's quiet crying. All the frustration, confusion and fear of the last 24 hours welled up in her brown orbs and burst out in the shape of teardrops. "I'm so sorry …"

"Don't be," Dean stuttered. His left hand dove into his trouser pocket and he held a crumpled, bloodstained paper up to his face. Beth recognized it as the second sketch of his mother. "I'm sure Doctor and Mister don't mind," Dean said, lips curving up in a sickly smile. "Because … maybe I'll get to see _her_ again." His eyes shifted to stare at Beth. "Thank you."

"No!" Beth protested. "Don't say that! You're going to be okay." That prediction was so very, very unrealistic, and they both knew it. Beth struggled to keep Dean hanging onto what little life was left in his body. "You don't want to just fucking _die_, do you?"

The man let out a hollow chuckle. In the cold of the January noon, his breath emerged as ghostly white puffs. "Why would I want to live?"

Beth couldn't come up with an answer. She merely pressed the improvised bandage harder against the man's stomach to stop the bleeding.

Dean's breathing rasped and quickened. His mind drifted into delirium and onto the threshold between life and death. Only a couple of minutes remained until the gastric juice would have utterly poisoned his system.

"Dear … Uh, dear God," Beth hesitantly started praying. She knew she hadn't exactly been His most obedient follower lately, but the situation required a miracle right now. "I am aware that it's my fault this man has been injured, and I hope you can forgive me for that … But I really need your help. Please don't take this man's soul, and I promise I …"

Beth's prayer trailed off, her attention diverted by Dean's stomach. The skin of the wounded area seemed to be rising upwards, as if some parasitic creature was about to burst out. Dean let out gasps of pain, his back arching from the asphalt. Beth watched as a small, oblong object rose from the wound and floated through the misty air. The bullet's grey surface was covered in Dean's blood.

Eyes wide with disbelief, Beth stared at the bullet's ridicolously slow flight. The pellet of lead floated through the fog at snail's pace. It finally came to an abrupt halt, caught between two young female fingers.

"Interesting," Louise said and contemplated the blood-spattered piece of shotgun ammo. She gave a wry smile, thinking about the same irony that had nauseated Beth earlier. "Of all the unearthly dangers lurking around here, Dean's worst injury was caused by a human being, and a weapon created by humans."

"It seems destiny has an odd sense of humor," Philip observed, standing next to the ubiquitous girl.

A faint hope flashed through Beth's mind, and she glanced back at Dean's stomach. The jacket and patient's uniform were still soaked in blood, and the bullet-shaped hole remained in the fabric. However, the skin on the other side looked perfectly healthy, save for the pale colour and the glinting sweatdrops. Beth could even hear how the man's breathing was slowing down, returning to its normal pace.

"Y-you …" The woman stared at Louise, astonished. For once, the girl had actually granted one of Beth's wishes. "You healed him. You actually saved his life!"

"Prospero would have done the same." Louise referred to the wizard from The Tempest.

"I don't know how to thank you," Beth said.

"A simple gift will be enough - such as that book you found for me." Without further ado, Louise dropped the bullet and reached out her bloodstained hand. The 'Crimson Ceremony' book lying next to Beth rose from the asphalt and flew into the girl's grip. She handed it to Philip, who stared at the two words on the cover with a mixture of joy and awe.

"Only four copies of this book are left in the Lord's world nowadays. This … this is amazing," Philip informed. Contrary to Beth and Dean, he could effortlessly open the book. He leafed through the pages, fascinated eyes scanning the finely printed words.

"How come Dean and I couldn't open that?" Beth muttered.

"The ritual only unveils itself to the worthy ones," came the cryptic answer from the priest. "It is not something to be toyed with by those who do not see its true power."

"What's that book about, anyway?" Beth asked and stood from the asphalt. Behind her, Dean propped himself up on his elbows and wearily contemplated the street.

"I can't even begin to explain it to someone as ignorant of the Lord as yourself," Philip replied. "But once we have performed the ritual, all the world's people will _understand_ Her glory once more."

A chill ran through Beth's spine, and she found herself nearly regretting that she had pulled that book out from the hidden shelf in the Baldwin residence. "Well … now that you've got your 'Crimson Ceremony', you're going to let us leave this weird place, right?"

"Oh, not yet. We still need the goblet," Louise said. She and Philip started walking up Munson Street. "After that, you may return to your true world." The duo proceeded towards Nathan Avenue and were rapidly swallowed up by the fog.

Beth gave a wry smile. "It's kind of funny, when you think about it …"

Dean stood behind her, unwrapping the impromptu bandage from his stomach and donning the coat over his green hospital t-shirt. "What's funny?" he frowned.

"Those men with the scythes, and the gross chrysalis-things in the hospital …" Beth had left her Shakespeare book in the car, so it had undoubtedly been reduced to a pile of ash by now. But she could still remember the play Louise had mentioned. "In The Tempest, most of Prospero's spirits were called Nymphs and Reapers."

-

With its dull grey walls and two-storey size, the building next to the small parking lot was thoroughly unremarkable. '**Silent Hill Historical Society**' proclaimed the sign next to the entrance. Kyle grabbed the handle and opened one of the double doors. Shelley followed him into a narrow vestibule.

The wallpaper had a faded green colour, and the carpet was chequered in dark and bright shades of brown. A L-shaped counter with a dusty cash register was located to Kyle's left. The room had three other exits – a closed metal door next to the counter, another closed one behind said counter and open double doors in the wall opposite the main entrance. One of the double doors had been ripped off its hinges and was now leaned against the wall.

"Okay, we're looking for a black goblet with a snake around the stem, right?" Shelley said.

Kyle nodded. "Carved from obsidian."

He walked across the hall and entered the first exhibition room of the museum. The walls were filled with old paintings and photographs of important events, persons and places in Silent Hill's history. A long display case was situated in the middle of the room. Kyle tried the double doors in the right wall. They were locked, and he didn't have any ammo left in his pistol to shoot them open with. "Great …"

Meanwhile, Shelley had examined the display case. It contained jewelry and magazines from the 1920's and 30's. "No goblets here," she informed Kyle. "But there's this weird piece of paper – it doesn't look that old, actually. The date's from three years ago."

Kyle walked up to the display case, interest piqued. A yellow page lay on the middle of the case, apparently torn out of someone's diary:

**Dad has been put in the brookhaven hospital because hes ill in his head. Mom says hes had a mental brakedown but I don't now what that means. She says he thinks he caused my death, but Im not even dead.** **I hope he gets better soon so he won't think like that. Sharon really misses him.**

"Huh? What's a little kid's diary doing here?" Kyle said.

The woman shrugged and started running her eyes over the historical images hanging on the walls. A large painting on the wall opposite the locked doors depicted a muscular man wearing a butcher's apron. A pyramid-shaped helmet covered his head, and his gloved hand clutched a formidable wooden spear. The caption read '**Misty Day – Remains of the Judgment**'.

"Eew. It feels like that thing's looking at me," Shelley remarked. "I can't see its eyes, though …"

"Yeah, there's something creepy about that thing," Kyle said. "The caption doesn't even say who painted it."

"Weird." Shelley walked back to the entrance hall to escape the Pyramid Head's judging glare. She opened the door next to the counter and stepped into the museum director's cramped office. The two desks were buried under brochures, old newspapers and photos waiting to be framed and added to the exhibitions. Shelley picked up a scrap of paper and read the director's notes:

**The display case for the goblet was smashed last night, but there weren't any signs of forced entry in the building. Besides, the goblet is still there, and why would anyone want to burgle this place? **

**That glass case couldn't have shattered on it's own. It sounds ridicolous, but maybe the goblet caused it. There's something _wrong_ with that thing. The pitchblack colour, the obscene creature on the stem… It gives me chills everytime I look at it - like it contains some horrible curse that's just waiting to break free. **

Kyle walked on through another door to their left and entered the cramped area behind the counter. After searching through the drawers for half a minute, he found a bunch of keys for all the museum's doors. He walked back to the first exhibition room and started trying all the keys on the lock.

"I can't help wondering why the two of us have been pulled into this mess," Shelley said. "Even Louise didn't know."

'_Originally, Philip and I had intended that only Beth and Dean would help us_,' the girl had said back on Nathan Avenue. '_But you and Shelley somehow got caught up in Silent Hill's realm as well_.'

Kyle finally found the right key and unlocked the door. "I don't want to know why we ended up here; I just want to get out," he replied. The next room contained nothing particularly interesting apart from the broken display case in the middle. The obsidian goblet rested in the case, a pitchblack serpent twisted around the stem like Satan on the branch of Eden's famous tree. Its eyes glowered at the two humans. They were so blissfully ignorant of the power it had come to represent.

"Still, I … I think I know why I've been brought here," Shelley said, half speaking to her companion, half thinking out loud. "I think I know the reason."

Kyle shot her a bemused glance and walked up to the display case, fragments of glass crunching under his shoes. The caption at the edge of the display case read: '**According to one of the Native Americans' oldest legends, this artifact was given to a chief who had lost his son in a war. The chief wandered alone to the top of a sacred mountain and sat down at the altar. "Why have you taken him?" he yelled to the spirits of the mountain. "Why could you not have taken an old man like me instead of a young boy like him?"**

**At that moment, an eagle flew by, holding the goblet in its claws. As it landed on the peak, it turned into a young woman with long white hair. "We did not take him," said the woman. "However, if your grief is sincere, take this black chalice and pick the white flowers that perpetually grow by the lake. If you use them properly, we might let you see him once more."**'

The moment Kyle slipped the goblet into his pocket, he felt something icy stroking against his leg. He flinched and looked down at the cat from Lambert Hospital and the subway station. The grey animal's tail felt unnaturally cold against his shin.

"Why are you still following me?" he muttered, training his pistol on the cat.

"Kyle, what're you doing!" Shelley rushed forward to stop the man.

Kyle managed to pull the trigger first, but the gun merely clicked to remind him that he'd run out of ammo. The animal spat and darted off through the first exhibition room. Kyle gave chase. He soon halted in the entrance hall, the cat nowhere to be seen.

"What was _that_ all about?" Shelley said as she entered the room behind him.

Kyle let out a deep sigh and turned to face Shelley. "I don't know. Suddenly, I just wanted to wring that cat's neck around … What's happening to me?"

"I know," said a little girl's voice from behind the counter.

Kyle and Shelley spun around to find the source of the voice. A brown-haired 9-year-old stood in the far corner, just tall enough to peek over the counter's dusty surface. Her eyes had the same bright shade of grey as those of her older sister, Louise.

"Who are you?" Shelley asked.

"Sharon. Sharon Barkin," the girl said, her voice soft and mournful. "I know what happened when Kyle first saw the cat."

-

A/N: Wolf: Actually, I have never played Devil May Cry. The Reapers and Nymphs were inspired by Prospero's spirits in The Tempest, as Beth finally realized in this chapter … Shortey: Well, Dean did pull through this time. But as usual in the battlefield of Silent Hill, there will be casualties … Tune in next week-E.P.O.


	16. Confession and contrapasso

Chapter 16: Confession and contrapasso

_I'm lost, exposed,_

_Stranger things will come your way_

_It's just I'm scared, got hurt a long time ago_

_Can't make myself heard, no matter how hard I scream_

-Portishead, 'Biscuit'

-

"What happened?" Kyle asked the girl, hoping to finally remember where he had first seen the grey cat. "And … how do you know about it?"

"I was there," Sharon said. "I saw it happen. I heard you scream." She hesitated, allowing her attentive listeners to absorb this new information. Then, she softly added: "We were both screaming."

"What are you talking about?" Kyle said, seemingly bewildered.

"You know what this is about, Kyle." The girl's voice grew frustrated, like that of a parent scolding her little boy for snatching the last cookies, while the treachorous child insists that he never touched the jar. "Although you may not want to remember it, you know what happened."

"Kyle …?" Shelley cast the man a suspicious look. "Is she …"

"Is she right?" Kyle finished his companion's query. "That's what you were going to say, huh? Is she _right_!" He let out a short, mirthless laugh. "You're not seriously going to believe that weird kid, are you?"

Shelley quickly shifted her gaze back to the girl behind the counter. "Look, Kyle, if you know something about what's going on … If you know _anything _about all this, you should tell me. Maybe we can use that knowledge to get out of here."

"What knowledge?" Kyle's voice remained confused and annoyed, but a faint tone of fearful doubt was slowly emerging. He knew he'd seen the cat before. He knew he'd met Sharon somewhere in the past. He just couldn't remember it, or rather, he didn't _want_ to remember it.

"You're still pretending it didn't happen," Sharon murmured. "You're denying it."

"I'm not denying anything," Kyle shook his head.

The girl continued: "Why can't you accept it? You won't-"

"Shut up!"

Shelley winced at the man's outburst, while Sharon remained motionless. In the following silence, Kyle's thoughts drifted back to how the nightmare had begun in his taxi. The streaks of blood sliding up the windows had bluntly announced that he couldn't trust the laws of physics from now on. But the worst part had been the sight of his two passengers' mangled bodies, putrefying in the backseat. Kyle could still hear the man's corpse whispering its puzzling last words: '_False. It's … false. This … falsehood, this deceit_ … _so _loathsome.'

Kyle finally realized that the passenger's corpse had been implying the same accusation as Sharon: That Kyle was deceiving _himself_.

"No," he mumbled. "I don't have anything to hide from anyone …"

Sharon slowly shook her head and laid her hand on the edge of the counter. She then hopped up to vault over it, but her movements were far too slow. It looked like she was floating through water in lieu of the perfectly normal oxygen pervading the room. Gravity simply refused to pull her down at its normal pace.

"What the fuck?" Shelley breathed. Kyle merely stared with wide eyes and gaping mouth at Sharon's flight through the stale air.

After about ten seconds of floating over the counter, Sharon landed on the other side. She turned to her right and opened the old double doors. "Goodbye," she said tonelessly before stepping out to the fog-shrouded parking lot at Nathan Avenue.

"Wait!" Shelley started after the girl, but the doors slammed shut before she could reach them. The woman swiftly grabbed the handles and pushed the exit open. But Sharon was nowhere to be seen outside. In fact, the foggy parking lot wasn't there either.

There was only a long, narrow staircase.

Leading steeply downwards.

Shelley stood on the threshold for a dumbfounded moment, her booted feet teetering on the edge. Her balance was soon irretrievably lost, and a high-pitched shriek escaped her mouth. She could only watch as the steps grew larger, filling her field of vision with their dark brown surfaces.

The collision sent a dull, throbbing pain through Shelley's upper body, and her initial scream of panic turned into agonized yelps. She slid head-first down the staircase for a few seconds, until her left hand finally gripped one of the banister's finely carved wooden bars. Her right hand gripped the adjacent banister, definitively stopping her fall. Shelley sat and drew breath on the narrow step, 15 steps below the doorway at the top.

Glancing around, she noticed that the staircase was surrounded by nothing more than inky darkness. The staircase stretched through this cold, black air without any kind of foundation to keep it suspended. The wooden steps led straight down as far as Shelley could see, before they were lost in the all-consuming darkness.

"I'm sorry," Kyle said, rushing down to her. The doors to the Historical Society slammed shut behind him, but he ignored them to focus on his fallen companion. "I'm so sorry - I tried to catch you, but it all happened so fast …"

Shelley couldn't reply to the apology. Her breathing came out in pathetic gasps, and her mouth opened and closed silently like that of a fish pulled out of its element. Her fingers tightened around the banister, nearly breaking the fragile old wood.

"What's wrong?" Kyle asked. "Shelley, what are …"

The woman abruptly leaned forward. Kyle winced as vomit gushed from her mouth and splattered onto the staircase. The repulsive juice trickled down a few steps before surrendering to complete stagnancy.

The duo sat dumbly on the step for a quarter of a minute, while Shelley's respiration slowed down to an somewhat normal pace. Deafening silence emanated from the abyss encompassing the stairway.

Kyle was the first to make a weak attempt at breaking this overwhelming lack of noise. "What the hell is this place?"

"I have no idea," Shelley replied. "I guess … the town knows I'm afraid of stairways. It's using people's fears against them." She turned her head to look at Kyle. The man felt repulsed to see the mixture of chalkwhite skin and blue bruises that pervaded her face. He had to remind himself that he probably looked at least as horrible as her, after what they'd both been through since this twisted adventure began yesterday.

"Do you want to know why?" Shelley asked, her voice as broken and miserable as her appearance. Kyle could feel her acidolous breath brushing against his nostrils, but he didn't move an inch. "Do you want to know why I have been brought here?"

Kyle looked away, peering down the staircase at the pitchblack depths. "No," he answered.

Shelley let out a weary sigh and looked over her shoulder. She was not the least bit surprised to find that the Historical Building at the top of the stairs had vanished without a trace. They were definitely not in the town of Silent Hill anymore - just the two of them sitting on these stairs in the middle of nowhere.

"I'm going to tell you anyway," Shelley insisted. "I have a feeling we might never leave this place. Maybe, for all I know, the entire human race won't survive what's going to happen. I want to tell you about this, in case …"

Kyle quickly understood what she meant. "In case you won't have anyone to talk to later."

"Yeah," the woman sighed. There was a long pause as they sat motionless on the staircase.

Then, Shelley began: "I was always a pretty shy kid. I never had any siblings or real friends, let alone boyfriends. My dad died in a plane crash when I was 14, so I was left alone with my mother. I can still remember what I was doing, when she came to tell me what had happened. I was watching TV. That stupid Disney cartoon with the three little pigs and the big bad wolf … I can still remember the lyrics."

Kyle silently listened to the young woman's story. He felt glad his own parents were still alive, although he hadn't talked to them for months. He promised to himself that he'd visit them as soon as he escaped from this hell.

"My life basically went from bad to worse during the next three years," Shelley continued. "I was almost obsessed with getting good grades, and spent most of my spare time doing piles of homework. My mom knew I was getting stressed out, but she didn't really do anything to prevent it. She was too busy worrying about her weight and going through all kinds of crazy diets. I guess that, maybe, that's where I got it from …"

"Got what?" Kyle asked.

"Anorexia," Shelley stuttered out. "Anyway, like I said, my mom was always taking those diets and all kinds of exercise. She talked a lot about my weight, too. Said I shouldn't eat so much. She could talk for hours about how obese girls will never be fully accepted in this world. And … I didn't want to listen to her, because I knew there was nothing wrong with my weight … But after a while, I could _see_ it. When I looked in the mirror, I could see all the the fat, the obesity, the hideous little freak that would never be accepted by the normal, healthy people around her …"

Shelley had to pause to draw breath. Her voice was growing hoarse and thick. She stood and began walking down the staircase. Kyle followed, feeling the air turn colder as they slowly descended.

"I hated myself," Shelley said. "One part of me hated my body for looking so horrible in the mirror reflection, and the other part of me hated myself for inheriting my mom's stupid weight-obsession. But sometime when I was 18, I decided that I'd had enough of it all. It was in the fall, I think. October or November. Anyway, I … I told her that I wanted to move out. She said that I'd never make it on my own, and before long, we were arguing, screaming the craziest insults at each other … She slapped me, and … "

Shelley slowed to a halt, and Kyle paused one step above her. She turned around and stared up at him. He was anything but surprised to find that tears were streaming down her cheeks, trailing pale streaks through the bloodstains. Her shoulder-length red hair clung to her skin like maggots on the dead tissue of a corpse's skull.

"I pushed her." Shelley's voice was barely above a whisper now.

Kyle knit his brows in mild confusion. "But … I'm sure anyone else would have done that if …"

"No," Shelley shook her head. "You don't understand. We were on the second floor of the house. I pushed her, and she fell … down the staircase … _this _staircase. It wasn't nearly as long as this one, but apart from that, they look exactly the same."

"That's impossible."

"So is everything else that's happened lately," Shelley stated. "Completely impossible."

"Did … did your mother survive?"

Shelley shook her head. "I checked her pulse. When I realized she was gone … I just ran. I ran out to the highways and hitchhiked all the way to Hooper Lake City. My last lift was in an old Pontiac driven by some middle-aged guy. He told me I looked a little skinny. I probably looked like a goddamn skeleton, but I guess he put it mildly. Anyway, he offered me a burger he'd just bought at McDonalds, and I said I wasn't hungry, but he kept insisting. So … I took a bite. And I puked."

Kyle didn't know how much longer he could stand listening to this bleak tale. But Shelley wanted to confess it all, and he respected that wish. "You had bulimia, then?" he figured.

"No," Shelley said. "I hadn't thrown up for years. But when I swallowed that one bite of the BigMac, I saw my mom tumbling down the staircase again, and I heard her voice saying that I shouldn't eat so much … I vomited all over the dash. The driver got so angry, he stopped the car and pushed me out. Then he just drove away and left me there."

"What a bastard," Kyle commented.

"I can't blame him," Shelley said and walked farther down the staircase, closely followed by Kyle. "I'd have gotten pretty mad, too … Well, I walked down the street for a while, and was lucky enough to find a hospital. Lambert Hospital. I walked in there and managed to say something like "I think there's something wrong with me" before passing out in the middle of the lobby. When I woke up, they'd put me in a room on the second floor and force-fed me. I spent the next three years in that hospital …"

"What about your mother?" Kyle asked. "Didn't anyone investigate her death?"

"Yeah, but since the police never found me, I guess the investigation didn't spread to Hooper Lake. No one really knew her," Shelley informed, "so I don't think anyone cared whether her death was an accident or not."

"But … Do _you_ think it was an accident?" Kyle asked.

"That's what I _want_ to think. But I still have climacophobia. I'm still afraid that someday, she'll come back to push me down a staircase, murdering me just like I murdered her …"

"At least you've admitted it. You've accepted that she's dead," Kyle said. "You can move on now."

"No," Shelley said tonelessly. "I can't. That's why I was brought here. This place … You've seen the demons, too. All the decay, the suffering … This is Hell. I've been brought here to be punished."

Kyle didn't reply. He couldn't think of any words of reassurance to soothe the damned soul. He simply followed her down the ridicolously long version of the staircase from her memories. The air continued to turn colder, its touch as sterile and chilling as that of a latex-gloved hand. Kyle thought he could hear muffled cries and sobs coming from both sides of the stairway. However, when he stared out there to find the sources, nothing but darkness greeted his gaze.

"Here's some more parts of that kid's diary." Shelley picked up three yellow scraps of paper from one of the steps. "Maybe they were written by the girl from the museum?"

"No, I don't think she's old enough to write like this. It could be Louise's diary, though," Kyle guessed. The duo read one of the entries together. The date was from about three years ago:

**Mom wanted to start afresh, so we just moved to Hooper lake city. I don't like the new school. The kids are really mean. They keep calling us witches. The kids at Midwich school weret so mean, I miss them.**

The next entry was from one year ago, December 20:

**I just bought Sharon's christmas pressent. She said that book with the island on the cover looked exciting, so I bought it for her at My Bestsellers. It's called The Tempest. Some guy named Shakespeere wrote it a long time ago. The shop girl who sold it to me was really nice. I think her name was Beth. **

The two entries on the last page were only a few days old.

**January 7, Friday**

**Sharon didn't come home from school today. We're afraid something happened to her, and mom just called the police. I hope she isn't lost. I'm going to pray to God and ask him to bring her back.**

**January 8, Saturday**

**Mom just got a call and hurried out. She wouldn't tell me where she was going, but I could see she was almost crying.**

**Now there's some guy knocking on the front door. I can see him through the window. He looks like a monk and he's got red circles tatooed on his hands, but he looks harmless. I'll go ask what he's doing here.**

"A monk?" Kyle repeated. "Circles on his hands? That must be …"

"Philip," Shelley finished the sentence. "That priest from Silent Hill's cult. He probably started this whole mess."

Kyle shook his head and glared out at the darkness besetting the stairway. "I don't know how, but … I think the cat triggered it all."

Shelley couldn't take the idea of a simple animal causing this madness seriously. She gave a slight chuckle and wandered on down the stairs. "Come on, Kyle …"

But Kyle froze on one of the steps above her. He had suddenly noticed a large shape moving in the darkness. The sight was beautiful, but deeply menacing at the same time. The shape flew and twirled around in slow, playful movements – almost like a dance, a ballet in mid-air. And yet, it wasn't just a flock of invisible dancers.

_The darkness itself_ _was moving_.

And in the gaps between its wiggling, coal-black fingers, Kyle noticed numerous brief flashes of colour. Skin. White, brown, yellow. Red blood. Contorted faces. Nude bodies hanging motionless in mid-air. Most of them upside-down, some in fetal positions, others reminiscent of Jesus on the Cross. They all wept and screeched as the darkness twirled around them. A few of them were praying in some obscure, ancient language. But beneath this cacophony of human voices, another voice uttered its monotonous humming. The voice of the darkness.

Flies.

Even before the swarm started flying towards him, Kyle had sensed the danger and was now sprinting down the staircase, past a bewildered Shelley.

"Kyle, what's the … oh _fuck_!" Shelley noticed the immense wave of darkness swallowing up the stairway behind her. She rushed after Kyle, the collective humming of countless insects tormenting her sense of hearing. But the flies weren't after a simple murderer. They flew past Shelley in dark rivers, their surfaces gleaming like water under moonlight. Kyle's feet pounded the wooden steps, but he could not escape the swarm. They entered his screaming mouth, clogged his nostrils, flew into his ears, covered his eyes …

At that moment, Kyle lost all reason, all hope and, literally, his balance. There was nothing more in the universe than him, the flies and the infinite agony. He tripped and tumbled down the staircase, but didn't feel any of the impacts with the wooden steps, due to the carpet of flies he had been rolled into. Thus, he also couldn't feel the metal grille of the horizontal platform as he finally landed at the bottom of the staircase.

Shelley sprinted down the last steps and skid to a halt on the slippery grating. The walkway was about twelve feet wide and continued straight forwards until it was lost in the distant shadows. More tortured figures hung in mid-air on both sides of the path. Louise and Philip stood before Shelley, but her undivided attention was only given to Kyle. The man lay limp on the edge of the walkway, flies covering his body.

Shelley ran towards him to make a (probably futile) attempt at freeing him from the insects. She was instantly knocked back by one of Louise's invisible barriers. The woman fell on the unforgiving grille, confined to the left corner of the walkway. She scrambled to her feet and glowered at the teenage girl.

"Well, it seems the six of us are all gathered once more." Philip smiled and gestured to the duo standing behind him – Beth and Dean. "And I see Kyle has still not accepted his true nature?" he continued, cocking his head at the insect-enveloped body sprawled on the grating. "How pitiful."

Philip walked up to the man and gave him a slight, gentle kick with his booted foot. Unable to object with more than a weak rattle, Kyle rolled over the edge of the walkway. The swarm of flies followed him as he fell into the depths.

"Fuck you!" Shelley screamed at the priest. She had to resist the urge to run up to Philip and thrash the life out of him, since Louise's barrier would undoubtedly still be in the way. Instead, she could only attack him verbally. "Why did you have to do that, you sick fucker!"

Philip shook his head in reproach. "Why do people get so furious over such indifferent events? Do you really think I have killed him?"

"You pushed him into a pretty fucking deep pit," Shelley said, tears of anger blurring her vision of the sect leader. "Yeah, that's what I'd call murder."

"You do not understand." Philip's sickly smile reappeared. "Do you see me being punished by the demons of Hell? No. I have not sinned. I'm not like _you_."

Shelley felt her hands clench into shaking fists. How did he know about her mother?

"But there is still hope," Philip said and crouched down to grab a small black object from the grating. Shelley recognized it as the obsidian goblet from the Historical Society. It had apparently fallen out of Kyle's pocket when he fell down the stairway. Philip held the goblet up in his right hand, and a crimson book in his left. "There is still hope," he repeated, almost shouting the four joyful words. "At last, we have all the items for the ritual – _words of blood, drops of mist and the vessel of night_. The Great Resurrection is nigh, just as the Lord and Her messenger Valtiel have promised my sect."

Until now, Beth had merely stood on the walkway, speechless with confusion and shock. The town had transformed into the Otherworld about ten minutes ago, and she and Dean had had no choice but to follow the rusty walkway that Munson Street had been reduced to. They'd just reached Louise and Philip, when the cab driver and the anorexic came rushing down the stairway. Now, Kyle had vanished in the darkness beneath this inexplicably floating path, and the priest and Louise seemed to have found all they needed for their ritual. "So … Can we go back?" Beth asked.

"Yes," Louise said.

Philip nodded. "Mankind can finally 'go back', as you so eloquently put it. The world will return to the purity it once revelled in."

"No," Beth said, exasperated. "I mean, can we go back to our normal world? I don't care if you two stay here in Silent Hill, or 'Paradise' - whatever you call it – but you promised that we could leave this freaky place. Dean, Shelley, me and …" Beth paused slightly before mentioning the fourth name, "Kyle. We found your ritual items, so we can return to our old lives … right?"

"Lives. Worlds. Such loose terms," Philip said.

Beth's impatience turned into fear. "You're not going to let us leave," she stated.

"I can understand this must be quite a dismal epiphany?" Philip said, still smiling.

"You can't understand _shit_!" Shelley retorted.

Beth didn't utter a single word. She was speechless, neither with hatred nor dread, but with disappointment. She had been pulled into these godforsaken worlds, forced to travel to Silent Hill and find some hidden ceremonial book – all in the hope of being able to leave this nightmare behind in the end. All in the hope of reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, a heavenly light which had now turned into hellish darkness. "Why?" she said, glaring at Louise. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm cold," said a familiar voice behind Beth.

The woman spun around to find Sharon standing a foot away from her, on the middle of the walkway. Before Beth could react, the little girl's hand shot out and gripped her fingers.

The touch felt cold and vice-like. Beth's fingers went numb in a single second, and the migraine from the train and the hospital elevator returned. Her head throbbed to a relentless, quickening beat, threatening to shatter her skull. She clenched her eyes shut and opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn't hear the slightest noise apart from that of her pounding head. It sounded like huge waves crashing against the shore, but she was listening to them from somewhere far below the water surface.

"_Stop it … Please …_"

In the midst of the violent headache, she saw the child's bicycle once more. The teenagers vandalising it, cutting the tyres open. Laughing, talking about Sharon. Contempt in their voices.

"_Make it stop, Sharon!_"

The grey cat, trudging around aimlessly.

The bicycle.

Ice.

"_STOP IT!_"

Beth staggered a few steps away from the little girl, clutching her head in pain. Her left foot came down again, expecting to find the usual rusty grating that made up the path. But the foot lowered itself into emptiness, and before she could regain balance, Beth tipped backwards over the edge.

At that exact moment, the migraine left her head as abruptly as it had come. Falling into the depths where Kyle had vanished earlier, Beth felt nothing but relief.

-

A/N: Apologies to Tommy, Amanda, Dean, Louise, Sharon and Shelley. I must stop this habit of giving my characters wangsty parental issues. Aaanyway, lo and behold: I have uploaded 2 chapters this time! Just click the nice shiny button down there to read on.


	17. Cracks in the Ice

Chapter 17: Cracks in the Ice

_These are not natural events; they strengthen from strange to stranger._

_-_The Tempest

Beth awoke on an icy lawn. Her cheek and palms were pricked by sharp blades of grass and a thin layer of snow, while the rest of her body was fortunately shielded by warm clothes. Her eyes fluttered open to find the lawn illuminated by the afternoon light of a grey sky above. She scrambled to her feet and brushed the milky-white flakes off her upper body and thighs. The wind snapped at her hands, and she withdrew them into her sleeves in a feeble attempt at staying warm.

"I hate this weather," Kyle commented. He stood next to Beth, contemplating the overcast heavens. Flies no longer covered his body, and he didn't even have any visible wounds or other injuries. He looked like a perfectly normal man, albeit a little pale.

Beth scanned the buildings and roads under the dull sky. She instantly recognized her surroundings as Hooper Lake City. The somewhat desolate town was pervaded by mist today. "Weird," she remarked. "I've lived in this city for nine years, and it's never been this foggy before."

Kyle nodded. "I know."

The large, oblong lawn was situated before a three-storey building with a twining plant growing on its red brick walls. '**St. Gilliam School – Et Facta Est Lux**,' proclaimed the brass sign above the entrance. "Et Facta Est Lux," Beth read aloud. "I've forgotten what that means …"

"_And there was light_," Kyle translated. "It's from the Story of the Creation, in Genesis."

"Oh, right." Beth ran her eyes along a row of bicycles parked by the school. One of them was surrounded by a group of teenagers. Due to the howling wind, Beth could only intercept a few fragments of their conversation.

"Sharon and Louise are so …"

"… that goddamn witch …"

"… them to fuck off."

A red-haired boy pushed the bike onto the icy asphalt. He produced a switchblade knife and cut the tyres open. An older-looking blonde boy ripped the chain off and hurled it away. It landed in the high, tangled branches of a tree on the middle of the lawn. The group of teenagers walked off down the street, gratified smirks on their faces. Their bodies were swallowed up by the fog, and their laughing voices were lost in the whistling wind.

"Kyle?" Beth said, feeling strangely apathetic. "Where are we?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Kyle replied. "We're at the St. Gilliam School in Hooper Lake City."

"I know, but … _when_ are we?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Kyle said. "In the past. Or rather, in a shadow, an echo of the past. A memory."

One of the double doors to the school opened, and a brown-haired girl stepped out. A heavy school bag hung from her shoulders. Beth recognized the pupil as Sharon Barkin. "Are we in _her_ memory?"

Kyle shrugged. "I'm not sure."

"When is … I mean, when _did_ this happen?"

"Last Friday."

"7th of January?"

Kyle nodded.

Sharon walked along the row of bicycles, until she found her own bike laying vandalised on the asphalt. The girl merely stood there for five seconds, glaring at the handiwork of the bullies. Her eyes scanned up to find the bike's chain hanging from the tree's branches. She then looked to her left at a vehicle driving down the street – a yellow car with the unmistakeable 'TAXI' sign on its roof.

Sharon hurried up to the sidewalk to hail the cab. Kyle and Beth followed, running across the lawn. By the time they had reached the street, the taxi had stopped, and Sharon had gotten into the backseat. Kyle and Beth sat down next to her. Neither the girl nor the cab driver seemed to notice the two blind passengers.

The driver turned around to look at the girl. Beth was slightly surprised to recognize him as Kyle Coppola, the exact same man sitting next to her on the backseat.

Sharon pulled some crumpled bills out from her pocket. "This is all the money I have. Just take me home, please," she stuttered.

"Where's your home?" the Kyle of the past inquired.

"Rubin Street 29."

"Okay, we'll be there in ten minutes," Past Kyle said and drove south.

Beth watched the city glide by outside. Snowflakes fell from the grey heavens and brushed against the car windows. After a few minutes, they passed her apartment building, Hooper Lakeshore Apartments. Her grey Honda was parked outside. Back then, its owner had been blissfully unaware of her vehicle's future destruction by the grim Reapers. The present Beth sitting in the taxi closed her eyes and leaned back on the greasy seat.

A couple of minutes later, Past Kyle let out a yelp of shock. Beth's eyes snapped open in time to see the driver turn the wheel right, even though there was only a downward hillside in that direction. Sharon screamed.

Suddenly, it all stopped.

The car stopped moving. No one had slammed the brakes - the car had just stopped in the blink of an eye. Sharon had frozen on the backseat, her mouth open in a scream of pure silence. Past Kyle's hands were clutching the wheel, but not moving one millimetre. Even the snowflakes outside had stopped in mid-air. It was as if someone had simply pressed the 'Pause' button on the remote control for this world.

"What the hell happened?" Beth said.

"We have to get out here," Kyle replied. He turned to his left and stepped out of the car. He didn't even open the door first. His body slipped right through the thick metal in one swift, casual movement.

Beth didn't bother asking any more questions. She followed Kyle out of the vehicle, feeling nothing but cold air as she left through the closed door.

The desolate road outside was leading straight through Hooper Park, a small forest-like area in the southern end of the city. Steep hillsides surrounded the wide road. A cat had frozen in front of the taxi. The grey animal had been sauntering across the road, when the events in this world of memories came to a sudden halt.

Beth realized why Past Kyle had turned the wheel. Since there had been no time to hit the brakes at such close distance, he had been trying to swerve around the cat.

"I should have run over it," the Kyle of the present said, standing at the left side of the road. "It would have died, but I still should've run over it instead of trying to swerve. I just felt so tired that day, and there was so much fog. It's almost as if this was all secretly staged by some unseen power – maybe that "God" of the Silent Hill cult … Well, when I saw the cat on the road ahead, I didn't have time to think. I had to do what my instinct told me."

"And you would have made it, if the road wasn't so icy." Beth put two and two together.

The screech of tires skidding against asphalt obliterated the silence, and the whole situation continued to unreel itself before Beth's eyes. The taxi slid across the road, Sharon screaming inside while the driver struggled fruitlessly to regain control. The car rolled down the hillside, leaving only a trail of shattered glass and fragments of crushed metal in the snow.

Hooper Lake was located at the bottom of the hillside. Its freezing waters were concealed under a thin layer of ice. The taxi spun onto the small lake, blood already splattering across its windows. A cobweb-like pattern of cracks rapidly spread through the ice, until it yielded under the vehicle's weight. With a loud splash, the car sunk through the surface and into the icy depths, like Lucifer thrown down to his eternal imprisonment in Cocytus.

Beth stared at the gap left in the ice. "So … you and Sharon are …"

She turned around and scanned the road. The present version of Kyle was nowhere to be seen.

The grey cat trudged off and vanished in the mist.

-

A/N: Yeah, I'm probably suspending your disbelief by now. Blame Kyle and Sharon's fate on the evil God's influence … Kind of like the truck driver in Pet Semetary. Anyway, the review count has hit triple digits! Thanks to all my readers for following this odd little tale of mine, and thank you so very, very much for leaving feedback on it. I wouldn't have gotten this far without you. Tune in next week ... -E.P.O.


	18. St Gilliam School

A/N: 'Clockwork Little Happiness' from the SH3 OST really fits the first part of this chapter …

Chapter 18: St. Gilliam School

_Part 1: Retribution for a death_

Louise calmly walked down the third floor corridor of St. Gilliam School. A grey gleam came from the sky outside, shining through the windows to her right, dimly illuminating the green walls, white arched ceilings and reddish floor-tiles of the desolate building. To the 14-year-old's left, a row of oak doors opened into classrooms. The rooms were completely abandoned, despite the time of day (13:30 PM) and the day in question (Tuesday). This, however, wasn't her normal school – this was _her_ version, and it was devoid of all the annoying kids and unsympathetic teachers. No, she was alone here today. Alone with the single pupil she had pulled into her world.

The 16-year-old, red-haired boy ran in front of her, his feet rapidly pounding the stone floor. He used to be such a tough kid. He used to play the leader of one of the school's most awe-inspiring gangs of vandals and bullies. Now, _he_ was the one who feared Louise. And _she_ was the one leading her own 'gang'.

Two Reapers walked on either side of the girl. Their arms were raised, the six scythe-blades glinting in the dim light that seeped through the windows. "_The beauty of the last struggles,_" they chanted with muffled, sputtering voices.

The teenage boy fled down the hallway, pounding on the doors as he sprinted by. "Help! Isn't anyone there!" he yelled, his voice high-pitched and shaking with panic. Urine soaked his trouser leg and left a yellow trail on the hallway floor. "Help me, dammit!"

But neither teachers nor pupils came out to rescue him. Only the monsters responded: "_Dying man, withering man, heed my words and speaketh them …_"

"You can't escape!" Louise said, beaming. "No one can escape from justice!" Her voice sounded sick and insane, but no one was around to hear it. No one except a pathetic little boy, who would soon be reduced to nothing more than a mutilated corpse.

Actually, her voice sounded _triumphant_.

The boy finally reached the end of the corridor. The metal double doors in the end wall were locked and wouldn't budge at all. Louise was right; there truly was no escape. The boy slowly turned around, tearful eyes locked onto Louise's unforgiving glare. "Why?" he breathed. "Why me?"

"Don't you remember?" Louise said, stopping a few feet before the boy. The Reapers halted on either side of her. "My little sister, Sharon. You and your stupid friends always treated her and me like shit. Well … It's gone too far now."

"Is … Is this about Sharon's bike?" the boy asked.

A plethora of apologies started tumbling out of his mouth, but Sharon cut him off: "This isn't about the bike. This is about what that incident caused. Sharon had to take a taxi home. There was an accident. The car crashed and sunk into Hooper Lake …" Louise took a deep breath, but only used the air to utter two monosyllabic words: "She's dead."

The boy stood there for a few seconds, the dismal revelation dawning upon him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry. We never wanted anyone to die, we just -"

"You 'just' caused my sister's death!" Louise screamed. "It's too fucking late for apologies!"

"Please d-don't …" The boy's voice had lowered itself to a miserable whimper. "I know I deserve to be punished, but not like this … D-d-don't let those things k-kill me …"

Louise's triumphant grin broadened. "_Those things_ are called Reapers. And don't worry. I won't let them kill you, because guess what? You started it all. You were the one who came up with the idea of ruining her bike, you were the one who cut the tyres open … You deserve something worse than the Reapers."

"Please … Just calm down and we'll -"

The boy froze as something fell from the ceiling and smacked onto the floor behind him. A sticky, tearing noise echoed through the hallway, followed by a deranged female voice, cackling and panting heavily.

The boy's hand dove frantically into his pocket and produced his switchblade knife – the same knife he had cut the bicycle tyres with. He spun around and raised the weapon, but before he could even graze his assailant, gooey hands shot up to grip his wrist, wrenching the knife from his fragile fingers. The creature flung the knife away and effortlessly pulled the screaming boy into its chrysalis.

"_Last struggles of the dying man, they are my blessings,_" the Reapers intoned.

Louise cast the Nymph one last repulsed, but satisfied glance and walked away.

_Part 2: Key of Ceres_

Beth had spent the last fifteen minutes wandering out of Hooper Park and up the snow-carpeted, foggy streets of this deserted version of Hooper Lake City. She now stood before St. Gilliam School once more. This city was obviously not her home, but merely another part of Louise and Sharon's world. Beth had a feeling that, if she wanted to escape from this world, she would have to go through the one place the two sisters despised and feared the most.

Their school.

Beth walked up the three steps to the double doors and gripped the ornate brass handle. '**Et Facta Est Lux**,' the sign above still proclaimed.

Beth pulled the door open and entered a short entrance hall. Her snow-caked shoes left white prints on the mat. She closed the door behind her and stepped past the green swing doors to the school's main hallway. Red floortiles, white walls with green dados and high, arched ceilings would, under normal circumstances, have given the place a vaguely festive, childish mood. But in this version, the hallways were pervaded by shadows and a dim, melancholy blue light.

Beth flicked a switch on the wall next to the swing doors. "And God said: 'Let there be light' …" The overhead lamps immediately hummed to life, a white glare emanating from the tubes. "And there was light," the woman muttered.

Stairways ahead led up to the second floor and down to the basement. The hallway to Beth's left led to the girls' gymnasium, while the hallway to her right led past a few classrooms to the school library and another stairwell. Beth followed the right hall and entered the first classroom on her left.

Dean and Shelley whirled around as the door creaked open. Standing at the teacher's desk next to the door, Shelley raised her rusty metal bar to defend herself, but lowered the weapon at the sight of a surprised Beth entering the room. "What are you doing here? I thought you were dead, when you fell into that pit with Kyle …"

"No, it's a bit weird. I just woke up on the lawn outside, and …" Beth quickly considered whether it would be best to tell her companions about Kyle's memory or not. Hell, she wasn't sure if she fully understood it herself. After all, the souls of dead people can't talk and act like ordinary living persons … can they?

"_Yes, they can in Silent Hill's realm,_" a voice whispered in the back of her mind. "_Kyle and Sharon are walking proof of that. You just had to see their past with your own eyes to comprehend what they really are …_"

"Beth?" Dean said impatiently. "What happened?"

"Do you know where Kyle is?" Shelley inquired.

Beth made a quick decision and chose not to confuse or disturb them any further with the story of last Friday's events: "No, I have no idea. After I woke up on the lawn, I just walked right in here. What about you?"

"After you fell from that walkway, Louise must have cast some weird spell on us. We lost consciousness all of a sudden and woke up in this room. Where _is_ this room, anyway?" Shelley ran her eyes over the pupils' tables, arranged in three humble rows of teak before the teacher's authoritative mahogany desk. Four windows in the wall opposite the door offered a bland view of the school yard. The basic rules of the iambus and the trochee were written with yellow chalk on the blackboard. A small, exotic plant hung from a pot suspended under the ceiling.

"It's St. Gilliam School, in Hooper Lake City," Beth explained.

"Isn't that Louise and Sharon's school?"

"Yeah, probably."

"That would explain some of the things written there," Shelley gestured to a bulletin board at the far wall.

Beth walked up to the board and examined the graffiti. Between the posters of pop idols, various childish insults and gossip about pupils and teachers were scribbled on the board: '**Kenny is gay**', '**Mrs. Midkiff is David's g/f**', '**Becky and Melissa are whores**' (followed by Becky and Melissa's eloquent reply: '**no were not!**'). But most of the scribbled insults were about the Barkin sisters. '**Sharon doesnt have a life**', '**luise and sharron are WITCHES**', '**fuck off Louise!**'

"God, kids can be so cruel," Beth said softly. Two storeys above, one of those cruel kids was being tortured by a Nymph.

"And illiterate," Shelley added.

Beth turned around and gaped at the blackboard behind Shelley. The trochaic and iambic rules had somehow been wiped out and replaced by an actual poem. Beth recognized the handwriting from Louise's diary.

"What is it?" Shelley and Dean turned around, their jaws dropping at the sight of the inexplicably changed writing on the blackboard:

**Spring come to you at the farthest**

**In the very end of**

**Scarcity and want shall shun you;**

**Ceres' blessing so is on**

"I think it's some dialogue from Shakespeare's The Tempest," Beth said. "But it looks like two of the words are missing …"

"A Shakespeare play? What does _that_ have to do with anything?" Shelley asked.

Dean briefly explained to her how Louise thought of herself as a modern Duke Prospero, and that this realm of Silent Hill could be compared with Prospero's strange island - with grotesque monsters in lieu of spirits like the nymphs and reapers.

"In the play, the main characters are marooned there, because Prospero summons a storm to bring them to his island," Beth said. "I guess you could say we're stranded in this world, too …"

"Damn," came the terse reply from Shelley. "Were … Were those stranded people in The Tempest just chosen randomly?"

"No," Beth said. "If I recall correctly, Prospero had his reasons for dragging some of them in … Vengeance, unsettled pasts, that sort of thing."

"And did they ever leave that island?"

Beth shook her head. "I don't know; I didn't read it all the way to the end."

"Great." Shelley looked up at the potted plant hanging under the ceiling. It vaguely resembled one of those carnivorous plants that would sometimes trap flies in its flowers.

Meanwhile, Dean had been contemplating the poetic dialogue on the blackboard. He picked up a yellow chalk from the teacher's desk and tried filling in the missing rhymes. First, he wrote '**you.**' at the end of the fourth line. He then looked up at the first two lines: "_Spring come to you at the farthest, in the very end of_ …"

"August?" Shelley guessed.

Dean shrugged and wrote the two-syllable word at the end of the second line. The moment his chalk left the blackboard, the word was thoroughly wiped out by some invisible duster.

"Guess that wasn't correct," Shelley said. The three of them had long ago gotten used to invisible forces and inexplicable disappearances.

"At the farthest, end of ... At the farthest, end of …" Dean repeated. "What comes at the springtime and rhymes with farthest?"

"Well, that dialogue was sung by one of Prospero's spirits," Beth said. "Ceres. I think it was just before the reapers and nymphs were summoned …"

Suddenly, the solution flashed through Dean's mind. "Reapers! That's it! Spring come to you at the farthest, in the very end of _harvest_." He scribbled the word at the end of the second line and read the rest aloud: "_Scarcity and want shall shun you; Ceres' blessing so is on you._"

As if on cue, the plant above fell from the ceiling. The ropes suspending it just snapped, and the collision with the floor easily smashed the pot. Lumps of dirt and clay spread across the floor, the unshielded plant resting in the middle. A brown, metallic object was intertwined with the roots. Dean picked up the earth-coloured key.

"What!" Beth said. "Who the hell would hide a key in a plant's pot?"

Dean didn't reply. He stared at the two letters engraved on the key: **Cs**.

"Ceres."

_Part 3: Liberation of a sinner_

Suddenly, the school's intercom system crackled to life, and a middle-aged male voice seeped out of the speaker next to the blackboard: "_Elizabeth Kalember, Dean Frost and Shelley Tate, please report to the third floor lab for your astronomy class_."

"How did he know our names?" Shelley said.

"It's probably just Louise's memory of her old principal," Beth guessed. "Did he mention a lab on the third floor?"

"Yeah, I think I know where that is." Dean started towards the door to the hallway. "I went to this school while I was living with my foster-parents," he explained.

The trio silently walked through the hallway and up the stairs opposite the doors where Beth had entered the building. Fortunately, the stairway was wide, with steps made of grey stone. Only the narrow, wooden staircases could trigger Shelley's climacophobia.

The wall of the first landing was covered under a childish painting of a bright blue sea, with fish and divers peacefully swimming around under the surface, and flocks of seagulls flying across the sunny sky above. Large papiér mache-models of colourful butterflies hung from the ceiling. But neither the butterflies nor the mural of the exotic sea could pierce the melancholy atmosphere that had been pulled over the school like a thick winding sheet. Suspicious shadows accumulated out of the corner of one's eyes, the air felt stale and tainted, while ghostly, taunting voices echoed from the corridors.

"_What're you doing here, Sharon? Fuck off …_"

"… _God, Louise is such a weirdo …_"

"… _loser._"

The trio reached the third floor, and Dean led the way towards the lab. At the end of one of the hallways, two silvery metal doors were shut tight. Luckily, they could be unlocked from Dean's side. He turned the lock, grabbed the handles and pulled.

With a demented cackle, a Nymph came tumbling through the doorway. It rolled to a halt between the two screaming women, leering up at them from its pupa. Reflexes kicking in, Beth aimed her shotgun and fired twice. The bullets plunged through the cocoon and sent blood squirting out. The Nymph uttered one last squeal before falling limp and lifeless onto the cold stone floor. A reek of decay emanated from its corpse.

Beth walked on silently, trying not to breathe the acidolous air. Shelley and Dean quickly followed. They didn't even notice the slight trail of urine left on the hallway floor.

Far behind them, a dying boy's voice whispered two last words from inside the chrysalis: "Thank you."

-

A/N: Wrath: Actually I'm not sure why The Tempest got mixed up in this fanfic. It was just there all of a sudden … Well, tune in next week for even more gratuitous Shakespeare references! –E.P.O.


	19. Dream logic

Chapter 19: Dream logic

'_The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.'_

-Revelation of St. John the Divine

* * *

Countless dead, pitchblack eyes stared at Beth and Shelley as they followed Dean through a hallway on the third floor. These lifeless eyes belonged to birds, hares, minks, newts, squirrels and other stuffed animals, all placed in cabinets on both sides of the corridor. Eagles and owls stared down from the tops of the cabinets. They looked ready to take off and swoop down for the mice on the lower shelves.

At the end of the hallway, Dean opened a door with '**3F LAB – Astronomy, Physics and Chemistry**' written on the plate. The room beyond was square and brightly lit by the fluorescent tubes on the high ceiling. Blinds covered the windows in the far wall, a grey tinge seeping in from the foggy sky outside. Intricate models of atomic compounds hung from the ceiling. Photos of Einstein and Niels Bohr hung on the walls.

The pupils' tables had been pushed together to form one large, square table. A model of the solar system was placed on top of the grey surface. The model consisted of coloured plastic-balls, representing the planets, and long wires bent into concentric circles, representing each planet's orbit. A yellow ball in the middle obviously constituted the sun.

Beth examined the teacher's desk, which was buried under a mess of test tubes, electric measuring instruments, short leads and bottles of distilled water. She pulled out a drawer and found two boxes of shotgun shells lying inside. "What kind of teacher would store up shotgun ammo in a classroom?" she muttered and grabbed the shells, tucking one box into her pocket. She sat down on a pupil's chair, opened the other box and fumbled to reload her weapon.

Meanwhile, Dean searched through the cabinets. "If you run into another one of those monsters, you will need something to defend yourself with," Doctor advised.

"Yeah," Mister said, "good idea, Doc."

"Do. Not. Call me. That."

Beth finally managed to reload the shotgun with five shells from the desk. She tucked the remaining sixth shell into her pocket along with the other box of ammo.

In a cabinet at the room's far corner, Dean found a large, blue plastic-can with screw top. The tiny writing on the label was faded and nigh impossible to read, but the three black-and-orange symbols were easy to recognize: A striked-out W, a flame and a skull with two crossed bones. '**WARNING: Highly Flammable – Reacts Violently with Water – Extremely Toxic**.'

"Dean? Be careful with that," Shelley admonished. She had been running her eyes over the model of the solar system, when she noticed Dean grabbing the large can of acid.

"Yeah, I just thought I could use it as a weapon," he said, adding softly: "In case more of those creatures appear."

Shelley nodded.

Beth was contemplating an odd hole in the middle of the blackboard. It was one inch in diameter and looked like a tiny shaft, going upwards through the board and wall. When Beth gazed through the opening, she could see the blue sky outside.

"_Blue?_"

Beth glanced through the windows in the left wall. The sky was grey and dull. She frowned and looked back through the hole in the blackboard.

Blue sky. Not a single cloud in sight. Despite the winter weather Beth had seen outside, the shaft in the wall insisted on giving her a view of a beautiful summer sky. Just looking at it made her feel warmer. The woman stepped back, eyes wide with disbelief. She noticed another hole in the blackboard next to the shaft, but it was just a round hollow. "_What the hell does this all mean?_"

She stared at the depression and the shaft for a few more seconds, then turned to examine the teacher's desk again. A familiar book lay between the bottles of hydrochloric acid and saltpetre. Beth picked up the old-looking edition of The Tempest and read the page it had been opened on. It was clearly an introductory article on the symbolism and mythical origins of Prospero's spirits:

'**Juno, Ceres and Iris are all inspired by Roman myth. Iris is the spirit of the rainbow and a messenger for the gods. Her servile and vibrant nature is reminiscent of Ariel, while Ceres obviously reflects the vile Caliban. Since Prospero himself addresses Caliban as "Earth", it is quite remarkable that the spirit of Ceres presides over agriculture. Juno, goddess of the sky and wife of Jupiter, could be seen as a reflection of the most powerful character on the island – Duke Prospero.**'

Beth couldn't help noticing the similarities between Ceres and Dean. Ceres represented Caliban, and Beth had found both Dean and the monster Caliban in the same place – the mental wing of Lambert Hospital. Ceres 'presides over agriculture', and Dean had found the key of Ceres in a plant's pot. "_So … am I Juno? And Shelley's Iris?_" Beth guessed.

Suddenly, she understood the meaning of the two holes in the blackboard behind her. The round depression was the exact same size as one of the planets in the solar system model – the large, light orange one.

Jupiter.

Beth dropped the book on the desk and walked up to the model of the solar system. "Juno, goddess of the sky and wife of Jupiter," she muttered and reached out, snatching the ball from its orbit between Mars and Saturn. Shelley and Dean's bewildered eyes followed her, as she walked back up to the blackboard and inserted the planet in the hollow. It immediately stuck in the depression as if pulled in by a magnet.

A key slid out of the hole next to Jupiter and clattered onto the floor. Beth picked up the key and noticed two letters engraved in its metallic blue surface: '**Jo**'.

"Juno."

A verse with four lines appeared on the blackboard, as if scrawled down by some invisible chalk:

'**Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,**

**Long continuance, and increasing,**

**Hourly joys be still upon you!**

**Juno sings her blessings on you.**'

The intercom system clicked and hissed once more, and the old principal's voice crackled through the room's speakers: "_Elizabeth Kalember, Dean Frost and Shelley Tate, please report to the attic classroom for your last lesson today – pictorial art._"

* * *

Louise sat in the principal's office, resting in the man's brown leather-armchair behind his desk. She stared out the window at the school yard. The falling snowflakes performed a quick, graceful dance before reaching their deathbed on the asphalt ground. Philip Blackmer sat on the other side of the desk, studying the 'Crimson Ceremony'. His tattooed hands slid gently over the pages as if caressing a beautiful body.

As Louise watched the preoccupied man, she recalled how they had first met three days ago. So many amazing events had taken place from that moment and up till now, but the memory of that Saturday afternoon was still fresh in her mind …

_Patricia Barkin put the receiver down with a shaking, chalkwhite hand._

"_Mom? Who was that?" Louise asked, standing in the doorway between the entrance hall and the living room. The Barkin family's abode was a simple two-storey house on Rubin Street._

_Patricia's lip quivered, but no words could make it past the lump in her throat. Her vision of her teenage daughter was blurred by tears. She briskly walked through the room, past Louise, out to the entrance hall._

"_Mom?" Louise said, her voice growing more alarmed. "Who was that on the phone?"_

"_Police," Patricia answered, donning a warm coat and shoes._

"_What did they say? Where are you going?"_

_Patricia ignored the questions and buttoned her coat. She walked through the hall and gripped the handle of the front door._

"_Is it about Sharon?" Louise said. Her little sister had been missing since yesterday._

_The tears finally trickled from Patricia's eyes, and she ripped the door open. "No!" she yelled back, denying the unbearable facts that she had just heard from the policeman. She stepped out on the cold street, slamming the door behind her._

_Louise stood in the hall for a moment, dumbfounded. She then ran up the stairs to her bedroom and pulled her diary out from the bottom of the desk drawer._ _The girl quickly wrote down what had happened: '_**Mom just got a call and hurried out. She wouldn't tell me where she was going, but I could see she was almost crying.**_'_

_Louise paused, wondering where her sister had disappeared to yesterday. Maybe it had some connection to the mysterious phone call Patricia had been so shocked by._

_The teenager winced slightly at the sound of the door bell ringing below. She got up from her chair and glanced out the window next to the desk. The guy at the front door looked like a monk of sorts. His bald head was covered under a dark brown cowl. He had crimson, circular symbols tattooed on his hands. He kept ringing the bell and knocking on the door, a patient smile on his face._

_Louise sat down at the desk again and wrote a brief description of the monk in her diary. '_**I'll go ask what he's doing here.**_'_

_The girl hurried down the stairs to the entrance hall and opened the front door. The monk had produced a plastic bag containing a sugar-like powder. His nose was buried in the milky-white surface._

"_Who are you?" Louise asked. "And what's that powder?"_

_The monk's smile broadened. "My name is Philip. Father Philip Blackmer. This …" He glanced at the bag before tucking it back into his pocket. "… is something that helps me follow my path through life. It's called White Claudia."_

_Louise frowned. "Where have I heard that name before?"_

"_She's quite famous in Silent Hill," Philip said._

"_Silent Hill," Louise repeated. "I grew up there."_

"_And I have come all the way from that town to meet you, Louise."_

"_How do you know my name?"_

"_The good Lord told me everything as I performed a ritual called Gyromancy," Philip said. "I also know that you have a little sister named Sharon. She is lost."_

"_Do you know where she is?" Louise said, a faint tone of hope in her voice._

"_Yes." Philip's eyes were filled with grief. "She has passed into the shadows beneath. But with our help, She can return to the countries of the world and spread salvation. You have been given a very special gift, Louise, and the time has come for you to truly use that gift."_

In the office of St. Gilliam School, Philip looked up from the yellow pages and closed the book of the Crimson Ceremony. "This is perfect," he said. "It contains all the guidance we may need."

Louise stood from the armchair. "So … can we save Sharon now?"

"Yes," Philip nodded. "We are ready. Take us to the ordained location."

Louise walked around the desk and took Philip's sweaty palms in her own little fingers. They stood there for a few seconds, holding hands, eyes closed, sensing their surroundings change. The air became colder. Biting winds started brushing over their bodies. The floor turned into snow. Vague shapes moved and transformed in the darkness under their eyelids.

"It's complete," Louise said.

The duo opened their eyes. They were standing at the bottom of a hillside in Hooper Park, surrounded by thin birch trees. Hooper Lake was situated beside them. The hole in the middle of the ice was still there, like a wound in a human body, one which time would seemingly never heal. Philip gave a slight smile. He had always appreciated the great symmetry of life.

This was where Sharon had passed away.

This was where she would be reborn.

* * *

The trio was walking up the stairs to the attic, which was more like the building's fourth floor. It consisted of three classrooms for the more artistic subjects – music, art and pictorial art. The stairs to the attic were made of grey, broad stone. Faces and masks, made of painted papier maché, hung on the walls. Fourth grade pupils had created them as part of a feature week about Native Americans. The heads were complete with fake-looking peace pipes and feathered headgear. They stared down at Beth, Dean and Shelley with their crude papier maché-eyes.

Beth froze at the middle of the stairway, gasping in shock. "What the hell!" She pulled out the Juno key from her pocket. It felt hot between her fingers, as if it had just been held over a flame. The colour of the metal surface had grown darker, from a light blue shade to pitchblack with a ghostly tint of crimson. "_The skies have darkened …_"

"What happened?" Shelley asked, standing farther up on the staircase. Dean waited on the top landing.

"I don't know," Beth said. "The key just turned warmer all of a sudden. Almost like some kind of bad omen."

… _Juno could be seen as a reflection of the most powerful character on the island – Duke Prospero …_

"_This is the key of Juno. Louise is Prospero."_

… _some kind of bad omen …_

"_The skies have turned black." _There were no windows in the smooth white walls of the stairwell, but Beth knew that the day had turned into night. After all, the key of Juno - goddess of the sky - would never lie to her. Perfect dream logic.

"We've got to hurry!" Beth sprinted up the stairs, taking three steps at a time. "Louise and Philip are about to complete the ritual."

"But why?" Shelley ran after her. Dean led the way through a short corridor at the top.

"I don't know," Beth said as they entered the pictorial art classroom. "I mean, I know what's going on – but I just don't know how to explain it without sounding completely insane … We just have to stop the ritual." The woman gripped her head as if trying to block out all the common sense and skepticism from her old life. This was neither a dream nor a nightmare. It was real. Or rather, it _was_ a nightmare, but one that she could never wake up from.

"If we don't stop it, we'll never find a way out of here," she told her two puzzled companions. "This world – this decrepit, unreal reality - will be all that's left."

* * *

A/N: Yay for crappy cliffhangers. The school is oh-so-wondrously easy to describe since I'm using my own school as the model … Wolf: "Just reward"? Have to disagree with you there. He was an annoying character, though, much like every other school bully.

SlapDash: Heh, either that or they've been _watching_ South Park …

Tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	20. Harpies

Chapter 20: Harpies

The pictorial art room was the largest classroom of St. Gilliam School. The only light came from the overhead lamps – the skies outside the windows had been reduced to inky darkness. The pupils' tables were covered under sketches and pencil cases, and the teacher's desk was filled with crayons, brushes and palettes. It looked like the whole class had just disappeared in the middle of a period.

An easel was put up at the blackboard. The canvas was white as pristine snow, apart from three arched streaks of fresh paint – one bright red at the top, a green one in the middle and purple at the bottom. It looked like an incomplete rainbow.

The room had fallen silent after Beth's apocalyptic prediction. Shelley was the first to break the silence. "If you really think that's what's gonna happen, then how do you want us to stop the ritual? We don't even know where Philip and Louise are."

"I think we'll find out soon," Beth replied.

"Maybe we're supposed to get the third key first," Dean said. "Beth and I've already found two keys – maybe you have to find the last one, Shelley."

"Iris is the spirit of the rainbow," Beth muttered. "That's what it said in the article I found in the astronomy room. The rainbow … Yeah, that's it." She looked up at Shelley and pointed to the easel at the blackboard. "You just have to complete the rainbow."

Shelley stood motionless for a second, frowning. Then, she walked up to the desk and grabbed a palette. "I seriously can't see the logic in this," she remarked and rolled a brush in the yellow paint.

In this world, however, Shelley was not supposed to see the logic. One could only catch a glimpse of it, out of the corner of one's eye. "Well, I think I'm starting to understand how things work around here," Beth said. "It's like one big nightmare, so we have to use dream logic to escape."

Shelley slowly nodded and turned her attention to the canvas. She painted a yellow streak between the red and green ones, then filled in a dark blue shade between the purple and green stripes. The finished rainbow was hardly an artistic masterpiece, but it would have to do.

Suddenly, the crude painting was ripped open by some invisible force. It split down along the middle and crumpled out in a parted sea of colours. A key fell from the middle of the rainbow, where it had apparently been hidden inside the thick canvas. The metallic surface was painted over in three stripes of the primary colours. The letters '**Is**' were inscribed on it – 'Iris'. Shelley picked up the key and tucked it into her pocket. "Well, that was an easy one," she commented.

The school's intercom system crackled to life, and the old principal's voice seeped through the speakers again. He sounded angry this time: "_Elizabeth Kalember, Dean Frost and Shelley Tate - report to the principal's office immediately!_"

All three stood motionless for a few seconds, looking from Beth to Shelley, from Shelley to Dean, from Dean to Beth. Beth then ran out of the room and down the stairway, taking as many steps at a time as possible, as if there would be no tomorrow lest she didn't reach the office 'immediately'. Her two companions followed …

… but Shelley froze on the middle of the stairway. "What the hell's happened to those heads!"

She stared at the walls, where the painted papier maché heads and masks used to hang on display. They had been replaced by real Native American faces, sticking out from the walls like a relief made of flesh and blood. Real feathered headdresses and face paint adorned their heads, while they glared intently at the trio on the stairs with narrow, unblinking eyes. A deafening song echoed down the stairwell, a chant of war, intoned by chiefs and warriors of bygone days. Blood poured from their mouths and trickled down the wall, painting the stone surface in red and white stripes.

"Shelley, hurry up!" Beth yelled. "We have to stop Louise and Philip …"

Shelley tore her gaze away from the Indians and sprinted on down the stairway.

Beth stopped at the bottom. "Which way to the office?"

Dean led them down the hallway, past the short corridor to the astronomy classroom. Shelley glanced at the cabinets with glass panes. The stuffed animals on the shelves had somehow had their skin ripped off to show the sceletons inside, which naturally consisted of mere cotton wool. But despite looking far less lifelike than before, the animals were now fiercely jumping and crawling around, throwing themselves at the panes, fighting, slaughtering and devouring each other's obviously artificial entrails. The only parts of the original animals that remained were the beady, pitchblack eyes, rolling around madly in their cotton wool eyesockets.

The war chant of Silent Hill's Native American tribe continued. Shelley ran on, following Dean down the hallway, vaguely hoping that he would eventually lead the three of them right out of this madness.

But Dean came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the corridor. The war song trailed off.

A boy stood in front of them, 13-16 years old. He stared at the floor as if imploring it to swallow him up and take him away from this scary place. He wore an ordinary grey shirt and baggy jeans. He basically looked like your average teenage pupil – probably one of the school's popular boys – but right now, he seemed utterly lost. A stray child, far away from home.

For a moment, Beth forgot about the dangers of the imminent ritual and the school's Otherworld transformation. Her confusion and dread was briefly washed away by pity for the strange boy. She had never had a son of her own. Even if she could find a husband, she doubted she could handle the challenge of giving birth to and raising a child. But if one were to blame her following actions on a specific part of her personality, it would probably be the maternal instinct.

"Hey," she said, stepping forward. "What are you doing here, kid? It's not safe here …"

The boy looked up from the floor and met Beth's gaze. His wide, nearly tearful eyes only invoked more pity in the woman.

Pity replaced by confusion, as the boy's lips parted and curved up in a grin of pure, childish amusement. He looked from Beth to Shelley to Dean, his smile rapidly broadening.

Laughter.

A loud laughter reverberated down the corridor – not one of relief or happiness, and definitely not that of an innocent child. It sounded utterly scornful, brimming with the glee of mockery.

"Wh-what's so funny?" Shelley asked.

But only the wordless laughter answered her query. Within seconds, the boy's voice had risen from a snicker to a guffaw. His mouth opened ludicrously wide, and cracks spread from the corners of his mouth, across his cheeks. The fissure broadened and split his face from ear to ear. Blood splattered from the gash and drenched his shirt. Beth screamed and drew back.

And then, the arm emerged.

Through some impossible anatomic system, a bare arm shot out from the boy's mouth like an elongated tongue. The index finger stuck out from its chalkwhite fist, pointing at Beth. With a loud crack, the boy's jaw jaw fell to dangle over his chest like a grotesque medallion, only a few shreds of sinew and flesh still connecting it to the rest of the head. The deafening laughter continued, not even muffled by the arm jutting out under the boy's lip and shattered teeth.

"… _what are you looking at, Sharon?_"

"_Nothing, I just …_"

"_Little weirdo._"

"_Shut up!_"

"_Ooh, I'm so scared._"

"_Yeah, now she's running off to her sister again …_"

"_They're so pathetic._"

"SHUT UP!"

Beth heard herself scream the two words at the bully. She recognized her own voice, but the words had not come from her mind. A cold shiver trickled down her body.

The back of the boy's shirt was ripped open, and wings unfolded from the spine. At first glance, they resembled those of some ludicrously oversize bat with a three-metre wing span, but their front surface was riddled with human veins. In the glistening red surfaces between the blue arteries, human mouths grinned. Or rather, lips and teeth were curved up in broad smiles throughout the wings, but the mouths – along with the tongues, palates, throats – were all missing. Ironically, an arm protruded from the one part of the body where the child's real mouth should be.

The Harpy flapped its wings and rose into the air.

Beth raised her shotgun and squeezed the trigger, but before she could fire a single shot, the winged freak reached out its right arm and took the weapon in a surprisingly strong grip. Beth could merely watch as the shotgun was wrenched from her hands and flung across the hallway, landing in a windowsill.

Satisfied with having rendered Beth unarmed, the Harpy raised its laughing voice to new heights of aural torture. It flew towards Beth, wings stretched out in a voracious embrace. The grinning mouths all snapped fiercely at the thin air, eager to find their victims. Even though they had no tongues or throats to taste and devour with, they simply longed to rip flesh apart.

Beth ran across the corridor to retrieve her shotgun. Dean hurriedly pulled the top off the blue plastic can he had found in the chemistry room. "I told you it would prove useful," Doctor remarked, proud to have suggested taking the can half an hour ago.

Dean dropped the screw top and swung the can forward. A clear liquid poured out, splashing onto the Harpy's face and its three arms.

For a second, the creature hung motionless in the air. Then, it felt the smarting pain as the acid began to corrode its body, trickling into its eyes, down its throat. The Harpy's laughter turned into a scream of confusion, agony, anger …

… a call for help.

The three doors in the left side of the hallway burst open, and numerous Harpies rushed out of the classrooms. Children, teenagers, of all perplexions, ages and genders. All laughing, arms protruding from their mouths, fingers pointing at their prey, grotesque wings flapping. Some of them were armed with various improvised weapons from their classrooms – scissors, table legs, baseball bats.

Beth picked up her shotgun from the windowsill and followed Dean and Shelley down the hallway. As he sprinted along, Dean let the plastic can hang over the floor, pointing downwards in order to pour acid over the red stone tiles. The Harpies flew after them, spreading their cacophony of laughter.

At the end of the hallway, green steel doors led to the main stairwell. Dean skid to a halt and turned around again. He searched through his coat and trouser pockets, but didn't find anything useful. The Harpies drew closer in a billowing cloud of wings, arms and hideous, blood-soaked bodies.

"Hey, what're you standing there for!" Beth yelled, panic shaking her voice. She glanced from Dean to the can's '**Highly Flammable**' warning mark to the trail of acid on the hallway floor.

The sunlight of realization didn't simply dawn on Beth – it burst up from the morning horizon in the blink of an eye.

She ripped a lighter up from her pocket, held the silvery box down over the pool of acid and fumbled frantically to produce a flame. Breaking her thumb nail in the process, she managed to get a slight spark out of the lighter. The liquid instantly endorsed her attempts and spawned an ocean of fire. Flames spread through the corridor, growing, rising, licking the walls, the ceiling, the Harpies.

But the creatures kept laughing, as if they actually enjoyed the heat consuming them. Beth stared with wide, smarting eyes as the Harpies seemed to completely forget their prey. Their laughter turned into shrieks of joy. The arms protruding from their mouths now hung limply over their chests. In a state of complete ecstasy, they danced through the fire like a travesty of redeemable souls in Purgatory. A reek of burning flesh flooded the fiery corridor. The sprinkler system kicked in, and water sprayed from the ceiling. The fire alarm's wailing filled the school, entering one's ears with the softness of a hot scalpel.

"Come on," Shelley said. "Let's go before they start chasing us again."

Dean led the way down the staircase. Papiér mache-models of butterflies used to hang from the ceiling here, but they had now been replaced by real, oversize moths. The insects hung from thick ropes attached to their wings. They fluttered and struggled furiously to swoop down. Beth shuddered and looked down at the hallway ahead.

The trio reached the first floor hallway and turned right, around a pillar, down another narrow corridor. "Principal's office should be right down there," Dean informed, running out of breath. Beth and Shelley followed him. Their six feet pounded against the stone tiles, but the noise was drowned out by the cacophony of the shrill fire call, laughing Harpies and the Native Americans' war chant.

Beth felt a headache erupt within her skull. She could hear Sharon again, gasping for air, sobbing. The sprinkler system drenched her clothes. Strands of wet, brown hair clung to her face.

"_Brown? But my hair's black …_"

The fire alarm grew louder and more strident, starting to resemble an air raid siren. Beth vaguely sensed the sprinklers' water attaining a dark red colour and turning warmer, thicker. "_Blood._"

"What the fuck is happening to this place!" Shelley screamed, not expecting an answer and not getting one. Blood continued to pour from the sprinklers, as if the building was a living body and the steel pipes were its arteries.

Dean ripped a door open in the right wall of the corridor, and they entered an ordinary, dry, brightly lit room – the principal's office. Dean closed the door behind them.

Safe.

_Home._

_Sharon closed the front door behind her. The entrance hall was dimly illuminated by a dull, grey afternoon light seeping in through the three panes in the door._

"_Sharon? What's happened to you?" Louise said and rushed up to her younger sister._

"_The … the kids at that new school," Sharon sobbed. "I was just on my way home, and then … they came and threw snowballs. You know, the hard ones with ice and rocks inside … I told them to stop, but they wouldn't listen. I had to run all the way down Rubin Street." _

_With tearful eyes, she glanced over Louise's shoulder at a framed photo on a chest of drawers. The blurred image showed the two sisters sitting on wooden swings in a backyard, beaming at the camera. It had been taken five years ago at the Barkin family's old house in Silent Hill. _

_Sharon walked past Louise and picked up the photo. She held it out to her older sister. "Remember back when we were all living together there, and everything was okay? Me, you, mom and dad … Why did that have to change?"_

_Louise sighed. "I don't know, Sharon." She replaced the photo on the chest of drawers. "Sometimes, I just don't know."_

"_But why are those kids so mean to us?" Sharon said, tears blending with the melting snow on her cheeks. "They keep laughing at kids like us, just because we look a little different. Why won't they just leave us alone?"_

"_I don't know," Louise repeated. "They're just … They're just really stupid." She gave a wry, reassuring smile and hugged Sharon. "Come on, let's get you some dry clothes."_

"For fuck's sake, snap out of it!"

Beth opened her eyes and found herself standing leaned against a cabinet beside the door to the hallway. Shelley and Dean stood in front of her. "What just … How long was I …" Beth's sentences trailed off as she noticed the angry and concerned looks on her two companions' faces. She looked down at her feet. Her clothes were soaked in the blood from the sprinkler system. The strands of hair clinging to her face looked black once more. Her shotgun lay on the dusty, milky-white carpet. Beth picked it up and frowned. She didn't remember dropping the weapon.

"You were standing there for about a minute," Dean said. "You just stood there and said all these weird things …"

"Weird things?" Beth asked.

"Don't you remember?" Shelley said. "You were talking about 'mean kids' from your 'new school' throwing snowballs at you. And you kept crying. What was that all about?"

* * *

A/N: SlapDash: Oh great, I've created a Mary Sue … And I think anyone could last longer than five minutes in Silent Hill. After all, the town calls you because it wants to torment you, not to kill you as soon as you've arrived.

Wrath: Really? I thought it sounded a wee bit cheesy. Then again, I'm always bashing my cliffhangers … Tune in next week, -E.P.O.


	21. Path of Juno

A/N: Listened to Satie's Gnossienne pieces while writing the last part of this chapter. Oddly enough, it fits the mood, but now that stupid melody's stuck in my head … Argh. Anyway, no further ado.

Chapter 21: Path of Juno

Instead of answering Shelley's query, Beth ran her eyes over the office they had just entered. It looked like the secretaries' reception room, with cheap desks covered under documents, calendars, Windows 98 computers, printers and a solitary fax machine. A doorway in the left wall led to a narrow room with a photocopying machine and a closed door in the far wall. The door to their right led to a large conference room.

"Uh, Beth? I asked you a question." Shelley's annoyed voice ripped Beth back to their conversation.

"I don't know," Beth finally replied. "Maybe I'm just … no, that wouldn't make sense."

"There's quite a lot of shit around here that doesn't make sense," Shelley stated. "What, pray tell, doesn't make sense _now_?"

"Well …" Hesitation slowed Beth's sentence down. "I think Sharon might be … _connected_ to me somehow. She's letting me see what happened to her and Louise in the past."

"And that's why you went into that weird trance just now?" Shelley said.

"Yeah, I guess. She was the first person I met after I woke up in that creepy hospital." Beth remembered their first encounter in Lambert Hospital's elevator. The girl had told her that she was freezing, even though the lift was perfectly well heated.

"_You can't imagine how cold it is here …"_

Beth shuddered and walked up to the nearest desk. A coffee-stained edition of Hooper Lake News lay on the keyboard. Beth picked up the paper and read a small article on the front page.

**TAXI DRIVER AND 9-YEAR-OLD GIRL KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT**

**Hooper Park was the scene of a tragic car accident last Friday, as 9-year-old Sharon Barkin and 45-year-old cab driver Kyle Coppola were both killed by crashing into the frozen depths of Hooper Lake. The vehicle, along with the two bodies inside, was hoisted up yesterday.**

"**It was a horrible weather that Friday," says recently retired police officer Frank Maybrick. "With those icy roads and all the thick fog, we're almost lucky we only had these two traffic fatalities."**

**The funeral of Sharon Barkin will take place on Thursday. Mr. Coppola's cremation is set for the day after tomorrow.**

Beth replaced the paper on the messy desk. The news didn't come as a shock, since she had already witnessed the whole chain of events leading up to the accident when Kyle guided her through the memory. Reading the newspaper article now only filled her with a reflective melancholy.

Meanwhile, Shelley and Dean were placing one of the secretaries' chairs in front of the door to the hallway. "That ought to keep us safe," Shelley said after jamming the thick, wooden chair back up under the knob.

The window offered a dull view of the desolate school yard. Beth could still see the shapes of fallen angels resting in the snow, their wings suspiciously reminiscent of mere childrens' arms flapping through the white carpet. "Snow angels," she said and gestured to the window. "The kids actually made snow angels out there."

"And what's so great about that?" Dean asked.

Beth shrugged. "Here, it just looks so … out of place."

Shelley nodded. "Funny that there's angels lying motionless out there, while demons are alive and kicking in here."

The three humans stood silently in the office for a few seconds. The Harpies could still be heard laughing in the corridor above. The fire alarm abruptly trailed off into silence.

"Fuck," Beth said. "The sprinklers must've put out the fire by now. You know what that means." She glanced from Dean to Shelley. Grim realization coloured their faces pale.

The Harpies would be coming for them now.

Dean led the way as they rushed through the narrow room with the photo copier. The wooden door was adorned with a single silvery plate, the name '**Principal Terry G. Mason**' engraved. Beth ripped the door open, and they entered the room where Philip had been studying the Crimson Ceremony book fifteen minutes ago.

Behind the desk Louise and the cult priest had been seated at, three strange doors were lined up in the dark brown, smooth wooden wall. The door at the left corner was painted black, the middle door was bright blue, and the right door was painted in three horizontal stripes of red, yellow and blue. Ceres, Juno, Iris.

Beth, Dean and Shelley immediately understood which keys would open which doors. Beth walked up to the middle door and produced her bluish key, while Shelley chose the right door and Dean unlocked the left one.

"So … Which one are we gonna go through?" Shelley asked.

Dean shrugged and pushed his door open. What looked like some kind of underground tunnel sloped downwards on the other side. Its walls consisted of black, clayey soil. Yellowish tree roots hung from the ceiling like stalactites. A cold wind emerged from the depths of the tunnel, brushing over Dean's face, carrying an acidolous stench with it. "I have a bad feeling about this," Mister remarked.

Shelley stepped closer to look at the tunnel behind Dean's door, but stumbled backwards as the air itself seemed to push her away. "The hell?" she said, gingerly reaching out to trace the invisible wall. It seperated her from Dean and the left door.

Beth felt hope sinking to the bottom of her mind, while dread floated high above. She reached out and pressed her fingertips against another cold, slimy, invisible barrier between herself and Shelley. Ripples could be seen spreading through the air like the waters of a vertical lake surface. The two barriers obviously seperated the trio from each other, forcing them to venture through the three doors alone.

"Shit," Beth commented. She should have seen this coming miles away – what would be the point of finding those three keys and the three doors, if she and her two companions were all going to follow the same path? No, this place had different plans for them.

"We're gonna have to split up now?" Shelley said, frustration and fear widening her eyes.

Beth nodded.

"God, I _hate_ this fucking hellhole!" Shelley kicked the invisible wall. Noiseless waves appeared in the middle of the air, but she still couldn't break through the vertical surface.

As if amused by Shelley's anger, Harpies could be heard laughing in the hallway outside the office. The door to the secretaries' reception room started shaking and cracking as the creatures pounded on the other side. The chair back under the knob constituted a pathetic defence. It was only a matter of seconds before the fragile wood would succumb to the army of grotesque children.

"Well, then I'm outta here." For once, both Mister and Doctor agreed with Dean's decision. "Hope to see you later," he said before disappearing through the doorway. The door slammed shut behind him, almost blown off its hinges by a sudden draft from the depths of the tunnel.

Shelley stared at the closed, black door for half a second, struggling to accept that the trio's ways were parting. She didn't even want to imagine what the powers of Silent Hill would do to her if she were to spend a single minute on her own in this enormous coalescence of nightmares.

Cracks followed by large holes spread through the door in the secretaries' reception room. The old wood let out one last, resigned groan, almost as if apologizing to Shelley and Beth, before it was finally thrust off its hinges under the swarm of Harpies. The creatures squeezed their monstrous wings through the doorway and into the room. The office was rapidly transformed from a safe haven into pure hell.

Shelley was the first to open her door and escape. She burst into the tunnel on the other side, running, not sensing, not thinking any other thoughts than a single mantra: "_RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN …_"

In the office behind her, the door of Iris slammed shut.

The Harpies rushed into the principal's office, guffawing as usual, knocking over desks and bookcases, smashing chairs and photo copiers, making a beeline for the last remaining prey in the room. Beth grabbed the handle of her door and pulled …

… but before she could run out, something came _in_ from the other side of the door.

Water.

A huge torrent of murky, greenish water rushed into the room and sent Beth flying backwards. She smacked painfully against the wall and landed on the wet floor. The waters rose, once more soaking her already blood-drenched clothes. She scrambled to her feet as the water reached her waist level within seconds. Furniture started floating up from the floor, whirling around in the currents. Water simply kept rushing in from the doorway. It looked as if Beth had opened a portal to the ocean itself.

The Harpies stood motionless, arms hanging limply from their mouths, as they stared in shock and confusion at the waves washing over the room. Their laughter quickly turned into screams of terror and agony. They whirled around to escape from the flooded office, but the waters caught all of their hideous bodies like resin trapping mosquitos.

And as Beth contemplated the Harpies' death struggles, she realized that every enemy, no matter how menacing it might seem, would always have some kind of weakness. The Harpies could fly, they could attack in enormous hordes, they could endure and actually _enjoy_ being consumed by flames, but mere water could effortlessly kill them.

Beth felt the cold surface rise to her chin, lifting her feet off the floor. The room around her seemed to disappear in a whirling mess of smashed furniture, dark green water, flailing wings and screaming children. Within seconds, it had become hard to believe that this had ever resembled an ordinary, dry office in a normal building. The Harpies started to abandon their fight and succumb to the waters. Their screams trailed off, and their drowning bodies sank into death.

Beth's head started bobbing against the ceiling as the waters flooded the entire room. In the last seconds before the surface engulfed her up-turned face, she took a deep breath of stale oxygen and clenched her eyes shut.

Darkness.

Only the cold waters remained, along with the faint, hissing noises of waves and currents. The quiet soundscape soothed her senses, contrary to all the cacophonies she had heard since entering the realm of … Silent Hill? The Otherworld? Louise's mind? Sharon's memories? Beth wasn't sure what she could call that hellish world, but she felt certain that she had just left it behind. This realization spawned a new question in her confused, groggy haze of thoughts.

"_Where am I now?_"

Beth reached both arms up to search for the ceiling. Only more cold water greeted her fingertips. She thrust her feet down. The floor had vanished. Nothing but water surrounded her sinking body. Beth knew she should open her eyes to see what had happened to the room, but she had been gripped by the most powerful fear of them all - one that grips every single human being once in a while.

She didn't want to face the unknown.

Sadly, the only way to stop this fear is to understand the true nature of "the unknown", whether that's as simple as a closed door, a dark corner, or in this case, the depths of a water-filled room. Beth's dread was eventually defeated by the formidable weapon of curiosity, and she slowly opened her eyes.

An infinity of filthy, greenish water met her gaze. No walls, no boundaries, no shore in sight. Just water. Beth would have screamed if she wasn't holding her breath to survive.

Her feet landed on a hard surface, and she looked down at the sandy bottom. The pressure here should have crushed her, but she didn't even feel the slightest headache. Everyday litter rested in peace on this underwater cemetary - used, thrown away and completely forgotten by people living happy, normal lives above the surface. Beth vaguely remembered that she had once been one of them. Strands of hair floated around her head like the pitchblack halo of an angel, fallen from Heaven to Hell.

The drowning woman glared up. 10-15 metres above, a huge layer of ice blocked her path to the salvation of oxygen. A hole was visible in the middle of the ice, though. A wide beam of daylight shone through to the bottom of Hooper Lake – or was it moonlight? Beth couldn't tell. She took off from the ground and swam towards the beam, towards the hole in the ice, towards life …

… but she didn't get far before the currents pulled her back down like the cold fingers of Death itself. She landed on the bottom once more, seaweed tickling her ankle to bid her welcome back. Her lungs were rapidly running out of oxygen. The race against time was over, and the hourglass had won.

"_Might as well give up now and get it over with …_"

Beth's eyes slid closed as she accepted the situation. Her lips parted, ready to let the water rush in.

It didn't.

Beth remained alive, as if equipped with some invisible snorkel. She opened her eyes and watched the bubbles rise from her mouth, felt her breathing continue unabated. "_The fuck!_" A series of reactions flashed through her mind – shock, then confusion, followed by an immense relief. Naturally, if this world wanted her to breathe in water, she could simply breathe in water. "_Dream logic._"

"Hi, Beth."

The voice came from somewhere in front of her, not even muffled by the water between her and the hoarse man. Beth squinted and ran towards the source. The water repressed gravity and slowed her movements down, making her feel like an astronaut wandering across some strange planet.

Through the haze of polluted water, dark shapes finally manifested themselves in the middle of the light beam from above. Beth recognized the taxi that had crashed into Hooper Lake. It lay dormant on the bottom of the waters, a wrecked shadow of the fine vehicle it had once been. A figure stood before the car, staring at something on the front seat behind the smashed windscreen. Kyle turned around from his old cab and met Beth's gaze with dreary, half-closed eyes.

"Kyle." Beth's voice was inexplicably audible over the noises of distant waves and currents. "So, this is the bottom of the sea?"

"No, it's Hooper Lake," Kyle corrected her, although they both knew that.

"Oh. That explains why there aren't any stupid mermaids around," Beth gave a weak smile.

Kyle grinned back at her, but it was less of an amused facial expression than an attempt to reassure the scared woman. His face was a sickening shade of grey, and his lips had turned bluish. "Good one, Beth."

They drowned in silence and hesitation for a few moments, before Beth finally asked a pertinent question: "You wouldn't happen to know a way out of here, would you?"

Kyle slowly shook his head through the filthy water. "I'm sure you'll find something if you keep wandering on across the bottom."

"What about … that?" Beth pointed to the hole in the middle of the ice above, where the taxi had crashed through the surface.

Kyle shook his head again. "That's my exit. I don't think they'll let you come with me."

Beth stood silent, vaguely pondering what Kyle meant by _they_.

"I guess this is what that girl, Sharon, meant when she said that I was denying something," Kyle said. "That I was pretending this had never happened." He gestured to the taxi behind him. "Well, I've accepted it now. Sharon has, too …"

"But her sister hasn't," Beth softly concluded the sentence.

Kyle nodded. "You have to stop her. You, Dean and Shelley have to stop the ritual before the God returns to your world."

Beth stared through the water at the strange man. She could sense that those weren't his own words – that something else was speaking through him. "You can't help us?"

"No," Kyle said, regret in his voice. "Not anymore. We can only give you strength and advice."

"Kyle?"

"Yeah?" His voice was conveying his own words again.

"You can't help us?"

"I told you; that's my exit." He looked up at the hole in the ice, a contrast of melancholy and relief filling his mind. "I can't come with you, Beth."

"Well … I hope it's warmer up there." Beth's fingers were turning numb, and her lips had already attained the same bluish shade as Kyle's. '_You can't imagine how cold it is here,_' Sharon had told her in the subway train.

"I'm sure it is," Kyle replied.

"I'll miss you," Beth said. That wasn't exactly true. She hadn't known Kyle long enough to develop any real friendship with him. They had simply been companions on this hellish odyssey, this voyage across a sea of nightmares. Unusual experiences don't necessarily bind people together.

Kyle was perfectly aware of this. He doubted anyone, not even Beth, would really miss him. But that didn't matter anymore.

"I'll miss you too, Beth," he said. "I'll miss everyone I knew."

Kyle took off from the sandy ground and rose above his old taxi. The light from the skies above enveloped his body in a white glare, as he ascended towards the opening in the ice. He could already feel the water turning clear and warm, free of the litter below. His smile broadened, his hands reaching for the surface.

Beth watched the man pull himself up onto the ice, until nothing remained except a slightly rippled lake surface. She briefly considered following him. But even if she could swim past the currents and break through the surface, she would be deserting Dean and Shelley, leaving them to fight on their own. She couldn't do that now, not after all they'd been through together. "_Then again, they might be deserting _me_ right now. Who knows what they're going through while I'm just standing here?_"

Beth started sprinting across the bottom of the lake once more, her pace as slow as if she were walking through air. She had no idea which direction to follow, but proceeding aimlessly is usually a better choice than procrastinating in the middle of nowhere.

As Beth passed by the sunken taxi, she glanced at the front seat. The familiar, pale figure floated in the driver's seat. His hands still hovered motionless over the wheel. His mouth hung open, nose broken by an impact with the dashboard, eyes reduced to white slits. The girl rested over the backseat. The currents played with her hair, concealing her face behind a curtain of brown strands, then suddenly pulling the hair up to reveal her lifeless visage. Contrary to the driver, she looked almost beautiful in her early moments of eternal sleep. "_Like a fairytale princess, waiting for some prince to wake her up._" Beth shivered and rushed away from the vehicle.

A/N: For those interested in the Harpy design, I've linked to a sketch in my profile. And if you haven't read it yet, go check out wrath's recently completed "Sins of the Father". It's nothing short of a masterpiece. Tune in next week, –E.P.O.


	22. Path of Ceres

Chapter 22: Path of Ceres

After wandering across the bottom of the lake for about half a minute, Beth finally saw the door. Contrasting with the green waters around it, the wooden surface was painted bright blue. The door was simply there, in the middle of the water, its doorframe lacking a wall. The sandy ground constituted its threshold.

Beth grabbed the blue knob. As she slowly pushed the door open, she felt her hand glide out of the water and into dry air.

The doorway offered a view of the lake above the surface, on top of the thin ice. Even though the deep waters around the doorway rendered the idea of this exit completely impossible, the portal stubbornly insisted on leading to an area located 15-20 metres above. It was like a window in the middle of a huge mirror, reflecting infinite waters. However, the way it seemed to defy gravity could only be compared to a hatch at the top of a water-filled area. The waters refused to let a single drop trickle through the doorway, despite it being a vertical opening with empty air on the other side.

This almost literally turned the laws of physics upside-down, but Beth had to accept it. She had no other choice.

As all faith in the concepts of gravity and logic began to slip from her mind like sand through one's fingers, Beth stepped through the doorway on the bottom of Hooper Lake. And just like the doorway had wordlessly promised her, she entered an area devoid of water, above the lake surface. The door slammed shut behind her, but she barely winced at the noise. Her senses were hypnotized by the astonishing scene on top of Hooper Lake.

The ice was dangerously thin and felt ready to crack under Beth's feet. Yet, a thick and heavy-looking wall stretched around the area in a long oval, encircling the centre of Hooper Lake's icy surface. Beth recognized the dark green wall from the corridors of St. Gilliam School. Two other, closed doors were situated in the wall. All three exits constituted the points of a right-angled triangle, Beth having entered through the 90 degree point. She wondered if the other two doors could be Shelley and Dean's entrances.

Thin shadows between beams of moonlight covered the ice in a cobweb-like pattern. Beth looked up to find their source and saw something even more unbelievable than the school wall encircling the lake. A huge construction of wires was stretched out at the top of the wall, like a bizarre excuse for a ceiling. All the wires came together in the centre, and a thick, leathery, black tube lined the whole thing. Beth nearly laughed out loud, as she realized that the tube was a tyre and the wires were spokes. "_It's a goddamn bicycle wheel!_"

"Amused by the scenery?" Philip asked. Beth looked down to find him and Louise standing on the middle of the thin ice, next to the hole. The hole where the taxi had crashed down, the hole where Kyle had floated up to his next life.

Beth nodded, grinning. "This is all so … ridicolous!" Her voice and the smile on her face made her look as if she was standing before a hole of her own, one that led into the depths of insanity.

"Well, as the expression goes, we don't have all day," Philip said. "Or rather, all night." The sky was ink-black with a dismal full moon. No stars could pierce the darkness. Philip raised his right hand to eye level. The coat sleeve slid down to reveal a black cup clutched in his bony fingers. "The obsidian goblet." He produced a small bottle from his pocket, removed the cork and poured an oily, white liquid into the cup.

"What's that?" Beth asked. "PTV?" Although she had never lived in Silent Hill, she had heard rumours about the infamous drug.

Philip shook his head, exasperated. "No. Not PTV. That's what the ignorant sinners would call it, as they will never learn to appreciate its secret beauty and its true name. _White Claudia_ …" As he spoke, he pulled out a long, rusty knife and handed it to Louise.

The girl took the dagger and looked up at the priest. "Are you sure it's necessary?"

Philip nodded.

"Okay, I'll try." Louise pulled out a small photo and contemplated the image of herself and Sharon, sitting on the swings in their old backyard, laughing. She tucked the photo back into her pocket and closed her eyes to reminisce.

_Blue sky with a few ghostly clouds. Sunlight. Butterflies. Sharon's smile. They swung back and forth, counted to three, then both jumped off and flew through the hot air, landed on green grass and laughed. _

Louise pressed the dagger's blade across her left palm. Blood trickled from the cut. Philip held the obsidian goblet out below her hand. The priest looked up at the skies, and the jacket's thick hood fell back to reveal his shaven crown. Blood dripped into the cup and through the white surface. "The ritual has begun," Philip declared, smiling.

* * *

With closed eyes, Dean walked down the underground tunnel. The place was already shrouded in impenetrable darkness. He could only feel the cold winds, smell the rancid air and trace the earthy wall with his left hand. 

And suddenly, he could hear a male voice, reverberating from afar. "_Mr. Frost? What is taking you so long?_"

Dean froze in the middle of the pitchblack tunnel. It couldn't be _him_, could it? No, of course not. That would be impossible.

"_We are waiting, Mr. Frost. We are still waiting._"

It was _him_. No doubt, no hope for other possibilities. Dean began walking down the tunnel again, towards the source of the echoing voice. If _he_ was really there, Dean wouldn't want to test his patience.

Another horribly familiar voice: "_Dean? Come on down here! Let's talk. Maybe _she_'_s_ gonna show up, too._"

Dean quickened his pace. After a few seconds of running down the seemingly infinite tunnel, he bumped into a hard, metal surface. A hospital door. His hand slid down along the frame. Cold handle. He pushed the door open and stumbled into a grey, dusty room. Soft, forgiving, white walls. No furniture. Light seeped through the fog outside the little window, illuminating Dean Frost's last abode.

Room F2.

The door slammed shut behind him. Dean pivoted to find a middle-aged man standing in front of the exit. He wore a white coat and crescent-shaped glasses. His face looked weary. "Hello, Dean." His voice sounded as deep and intimidating as usual. "I am pleased to meet you in person."

"Doctor," Dean breathed. "You've …"

"Come true? I have come true? That is what you were going to say, was it not?" Doctor crinkled his hawk nose in disgust. "I have always been true. What about yourself, Dean? Are you _true_? Will you ever _come true_?"

"Hey, cut it out. You're scaring him."

Dean slowly turned around. Mister stood leaned against the opposite wall, a friendly smile on his face. He was probably in his mid-thirties and wore ordinary, crumpled clothes. "Hi there, Dean."

"H-hi," Dean managed to stutter out.

"Mister." Doctor gave the man a slight nod, then turned his attention back to Dean. "Do you think Mister is _true_, Dean?"

"What! Of course I'm real!" Mister gestured to his body. "Look, I'm right here, moving and talking and thinking!"

Doctor's eye twitched slightly. "You do not understand, Dean. He is merely an illusion. You know that. Accept it."

Dean took a few steps backwards to keep both men at a distance. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Doctor let out a melancholy sigh. "I knew this would happen. I have been expecting it for years." He raked a hand through his grey hair. "You are ill, Dean. Your mind is ill."

"What the hell are you talking about, Doc?" Mister protested. "There's nothing wrong with my …"

Doctor lashed out with the speed of a venomous snake. His fist connected with Mister's jaw and sent the man flying backwards, into a corner. Dean stood motionless and watched Mister slump down on the dusty floor, blood trickling from his nostrils and mouth. Doctor calmly produced a syringe, walked across the room, pulled Mister's shirt sleeve back and injected a clear liquid into his arm. With one last groan, Mister's body went completely limp.

Doctor tucked the half-empty syringe back into his coat pocket. "I _hate_ it when he calls me 'Doc'."

* * *

Louise was still letting her blod drip into the goblet. Beth ran towards her and the priest, out to the center of the ice. "_If I don't stop this now, they'll …_" 

Her train of thought abruptly stopped on its wobbly tracks, as Beth slammed against another invisible barrier. She stumbled back, but soon resumed kicking and pounding on the wall, systematically searching for a gap. Ripples spread throughout the air. Not even the slightest weak spot was revealed to Beth's frantic arms, as she traced the circular wall around Louise, Philip and the hole in the ice. "Let me in! You don't know what you're doing, Louise!"

"I'm saving Sharon," Louise said.

"Ignore Beth. Ignorance pervades her soul," Philip remarked. He held the obsidian goblet up to eye level and contemplated the blood-stained White Claudia inside. Handing the cup to Louise, he produced the book of the Crimson Ceremony and opened it on its middle pages.

* * *

"Is he … dead?" Dean asked. 

Doctor shook his head and answered: "He will probably be unconscious for twenty minutes. Half an hour at most. That will leave plenty of time for me to converse with you, Dean."

"Converse?" Doctor's vocabulary had always been much more sophisticated than Dean's.

"Talk."

"About what?"

"Everything." Doctor produced a document from his white coat. "This is what the hospital wrote about you. I believe Beth read it, back when you were both visiting the main office." He read aloud: "_Was born in Silent Hill, New England. Father deserted the mother soon afterwards and left her to raise the child on her own (illness partly rooted in lack of father figure?). _For once, I can agree with those quacks at Lambert Hospital."

Doctor slipped the paper back into his pocket and started pacing back and forth between Mister in the corner and Dean in the opposite end of the room. He took a deep breath and embarked on a monologue: "First of all, you must understand that you already _have_ a father, Dean. We cannot know where he has gone – perhaps he has married some other woman and found happiness, perhaps he lies dead and buried – but we know that he is out there. He exists." Doctor walked back from the corner and approached Dean yet again, stepping even closer this time. Both bodies were of equal height, but Dean felt like Doctor was towering above him. An adult in front of a defenceless child. Doctor stopped there, a mere inch of stale air between him and the mental patient.

"Your father is _true_, Dean," he informed. "In fact, your father is more true than any of this ... this falsehood." Doctor's soft voice made such a sharp contrast to the noisy silence of the hospital room.

"I know he's true," Dean said.

"Then why do you create these lies? So many people have been abandoned by their fathers as well, but they can learn to cope with it without resorting to _lies_. Illusions." Doctor gestured to Mister. "Dreams of what a friendly, loving, encouraging, optimistic father would be like." He looked down at himself, his white robe, his bony hands. "Nightmares of what a cynical, unfeeling, even _violent_ father would be like. But it is all lies, Dean. You have to stop lying." Doctor gripped Dean's head between his hands. "Stop lying. It is time to leave this trial and wake up from Wonderland, you immature little idiot."

"Go away!" Dean sobbed.

The exasperated Doctor thrust the man's head around and smacked it into the wall. Dean howled in pain. "I cannot go _anywhere_ before you stop lying," Doctor said, watching in disgust as Dean curled up on the floor. "Is it really that hard to understand? No, of course not. You understand this perfectly well; otherwise, _I_ would not understand."

* * *

**Speak.**

Trapped outside the barrier, Beth could only watch as Philip began to read aloud. "You are the Crimson One. The lies and the mist are not they, but you. We know that you are One. Yes, and the One you are. We hearken to you!"

Louise raised the goblet to her lips and drank its white and crimson liquid.

"Twenty score men and seven thousand beasts. We heed your words and speak them to all, that they shall ever be obeyed, even under the light of the proud and merciless sun. You would bring down bitter vengeance upon them, and they would suffer your eternal wrath. The beauty of the withering flower and the last struggles of the dying man, they would be your blessings."

Louise emptied the cup and dropped it, arms now hanging limply at her sides. The goblet landed on the ice and rolled off the edge, sinking through the murky lake surface, nevermore to be seen by human eyes.

"I call upon you, and all that is you, in the place that is silent. Oh, proud fragrance of life which flies towards the heart."

* * *

Doctor bent down, grabbed Dean's hair, stood and pulled the man to his feet like a marionette. "I must admit this, Dean; I am beginning to doubt my plan. Perhaps you cannot be cured. Perhaps, even with all my skills as a Doctor, I cannot save you from your own lies." 

"They're not lies," Dean murmured. His feet were now planted firmly on the floor. He raised his voice and repeated: "They're not lies!"

Doctor's hand shot out, gripping Dean's throat, pushing him up against the wall. He produced a long, silvery scalpel from his jacket and pressed the blade against Dean's throat. "Ah, the Adam's apple. Formed by the largest cartilage of the larynx, usually more prominent in men than in women. It is such a marvellous anatomical part. One quick, deep slit through the elastic vocal cords at the top of the trachea, the windpipe, and you will not even be able to scream in agony. Your voice will simply vanish, along with your life. Is that murder, Dean?"

Silence. A cacophony of silence.

"Answer me!"

"M-murder. It's mur-"

"NO!" Doctor let the scalpel slide up, past Dean's chin, onto his cheek. Tears of dread trickled down the pale skin and landed on the razorsharp blade.

"There are slower ways to die, Dean. More painful ways. Do you want to suffer before you die, Dean?"

"N-n-no. Please …"

"Then answer me. I want to help you, Dean. Simply give me the correct answer. If I killed you, would that be a murder?"

Dean slowly shook his head.

"What would it be, Dean? If it is not murder, what is it?" When the reply did not come, Doctor let the scalpel slide farther up Dean's cheek. The man clenched his eyes shut. Doctor started pressing the blade against one of the closed lids.

Dean finally screamed the answer.

"Suicide!"

* * *

Louise's eyes closed and her lips parted. White mist slithered out like a serpent. The trail of mist slowly billowed down, towards the hole in the ice. A thin, scarlet line could be seen in the middle of the fog – like an artery, ripped from Louise's system to pump blood into someone else. Both the vein and the mist around it slipped into the waters without leaving the slightest ripple. 

"Oh, Cup which brims with the whitest of wine, it is in thee that all begins."

* * *

Doctor lowered the scalpel and stepped back. "You are making progress, Dean. I shall allow you a reward. Give me the portrait of _her_." 

Dean hesitated a little before producing the crumpled paper from his pocket, handing it to Doctor. One side had once displayed the patient's first portrait of _her_, before it was covered under black streaks in the hospital office. The other side was adorned with a quick sketch drawn in Beth's car on the way to Silent Hill, outlining _her_ face. Doctor took a few steps back, then held the paper out vertically between him and his patient. Dean stared into his mother's colourless eyes. He didn't even gasp as they turned blue.

The skin around them soon followed suit, obtaining a slightly tanned shade, while the shoulder-long hair turned blonde. The shoulders below seemed to appear from _inside_ the paper itself. The paper grew and widened, making room for _her_ entire body to leave it. It was as if _she_ had always been waiting there to break free from _her _confinement of pristine paper.

"Hi, Dean," _she_ said, smiling. "It's great to see you again." The paper, now large enough to depict an adult person in life-size, fell behind _her_ and lay on the floor, completely chalkwhite.

"Mom … You're back."

_Dean made a frantic attempt to colour over the black streaks with the four crayons. Alas, the blackness spread and covered up all other colours until only the woman's mouth was visible, uttering two last words: _"Forget me"

Dean furrowed his brows at the memory. "You told me to forget you."

_She_ nodded, a slight melancholy in _her _smile. "But you remembered me, and that's why I came back. You disappointed me, Dean. I want you to forget."

In the far corner, Mister regained consciousness with a bemused groan. He stood and walked across the room. Doctor was standing in front of the door again, motionless, observing the situation.

"Mister!" _She_ threw her arms around the man in a loving embrace. They kissed and gazed into each other's blue eyes.

"Hi, honey," Mister said. "I missed you."

"Lies," Doctor commented. He walked up to the happy couple and pushed Mister away. Producing another instrument from his coat, he raised his bony hand, surgical saw blade flashing down through the air.

"Hey, Doc! What are you -"

But Mister never finished the sentence. He collapsed on the floor, his voice rising to an agonized screech, his torso ripped open from chest to groin. Intestines and blood sprayed out like waters breaking through a dam.

The bittersweet smile lingered on _her_ face as _she_ watched.

Doctor dropped the saw. It fell to the floor with a soft clanking, which was easily drowned out by Mister's scream. The man soon gave up his hopeless struggle, and the room fell silent.

"Perhaps …" Doctor turned to face his patient. Dean stared wide-eyed at Mister's corpse. "There might still be a way to cure you, Dean. It will be dangerous, but I see no other options. One last act of revenge, and you could forget us all."

"Avenge me," _she_ said.

Dean tore his gaze away from Mister and looked up at Doctor. _She_ was nowhere to be seen. The paper on the floor was still white as pure snow, but it had now returned to its normal size.

* * *

For a moment, all three stood motionless. Philip closing the crimson book. Beth watching from the other side of the barrier. Louise letting the trail of pristine mist with the red line flow from her mouth, into the water. 

"Enough," Philip said.

Even faster than it had appeared, the trail vanished as Louise closed her mouth. Ripples finally appeared on the water surface, spreading from the middle where the ghostly vein had broken through.

Beth furrowed her brows. "What the hell was that thing?"

"A connection," Philip answered.

"To what?"

Beth's question received a sudden answer, as the surface was broken again – this time from beneath.

* * *

"Did you hear that?" For the first time since they had met, Doctor actually smiled to Dean. "_She_ wants you to avenge _her_. Can you do that?" 

Dean shook his head.

"Of course not. Goodbye, Dean." Doctor walked up to Mister, took the corpse by the shoulders and lifted it from the warm pool of blood. He gripped the torso and tugged at the vertical wound, pulling it wide open. Then, he simply plunged himself head-first into Mister's ribcage. Within seconds, both men had entered a ridicolous, obscene mutation. A flash of light engulfed the bodies, and Dean clenched his eyes shut against the painful glare.

"_Avenge me …_"

He opened his eyes as the room turned dim once more. Doctor and Mister had vanished. A strange figure stood before Dean. The newly arrived man did not seem unlike most people's vision of the Grim Reaper – tall, thin, wearing a black robe that left everything to the imagination. His head, however, was not covered by a cowl. The skin looked pale and bald, but the face was concealed under a crumpled, white paper hanging from his forehead. Dean recognized it as the exact same paper he had used for the portrait of _her_.

The stranger stepped forward and reached out his right arm. A razorsharp blade emerged from the sleeve like a pointing finger. Dean gingerly took the scalpel offered by his new companion.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"You already know it." Lord's voice sounded even colder and deeper than Doctor's.

"W-what do you want?"

"Revenge."

* * *

A/N: This has got to be the longest and weirdest chapter thus far ...Aaaanyway, remember to tune in next week as usual. –E.P.O. 


	23. Path of Iris

Chapter 23: Path of Iris

After Shelley had put some distance between the Harpies in the principal's office and herself, she slowed down her pace to a nervous walk. The tunnel was round and slippery, sloping downwards. A dimly glistening, organic mass constituted the walls. Wherever Shelley looked, her gaze was met by more flesh. Thick veins throbbed through the bright red surface. Various disgusting fluids dripped from the low ceiling and trickled down the curved walls. It was as if Shelley had stepped inside the digestive system of some obese, titanic creature.

The worst part was, without a doubt, the stench. It reeked of decay – slow, rancid decay. But Shelley fought back the dread and walked on. Her courage was only rewarded by the stench growing stronger. The tunnel would clearly lead her down to the very heart of the decay.

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf," Shelley murmured, her voice anything but melodious. "Big bad wolf, big bad …"

"… _wolf – who's afraid of the big bad wolf?_" The voice was clearly that of a little girl, 7-9 years old. It echoed through the tunnel from ahead, and for a second, Shelley felt the stench disappear as fresh, cool air brushed over her face. "_Tra la la la la …_"

The voice trailed off, and the stench returned to torture Shelley's olfactory sense. The woman started running through the tunnel, her feet splashing across the goo-covered floor, as she rushed past cobwebs of arteries, bones and obese flesh.

She halted at the top of a familiar staircase. The wooden steps from her old home appeared in the middle of the tunnel, leading steeply downwards. The passage had turned narrow to fit the stairs, but the low ceiling and walls were still made of pulsating flesh in lieu of wood. Shelley felt a cold wave of nausea washing over her at the sight of the stairway.

"_Take it easy. It's the only way forward, and it's just a stairway,_" she told herself.

Shelley gripped the banister, clutching it until her knuckles turned chalkwhite. Her feet remained motionless.

* * *

"Revenge?" Dean repeated Lord's answer. "What do you mean?"

"_A car hit her. She died on the spot," Dean replied. "The driver was never arrested. Everyone said it was nothing more than an accident, but I know the cult did it. They just hired someone to make it look like an accident …" _

"The cult," Lord said. "You must stop them. _She _wants you to stop them."

"How?"

"The head priest." Still concealing Lord's face, the white paper rustled slightly as he spoke.

"You mean Philip?" Dean asked, not receiving an answer from the taciturn Lord. The patient looked down at the scalpel in his hand. The razorsharp blade glinted in the moonlight from the window.

And suddenly, Dean understood what Lord wanted.

* * *

"_Just a stairway. Count the steps …_" Shelley ran her eyes over the steep path, down to the closed wooden door at the bottom. "_Fifteen steps. Take it easy._"

Her left foot finally descended onto the first step. It creaked slightly under her weight. The sound brought back so many memories …

Her right foot joined her left one on the step. "_Good. Fourteen steps left._"

Next step. Right foot first, then the left one. "_Thirteen steps left. Just relax._"

Some kind of acidolous fluid dripped from the ceiling and landed on her bowed neck. She winced, glanced back over her shoulder, reeled slightly – "**_oh my God I'm going to fall and die die DIE_**" – but easily regained her balance. Left foot down. Right foot follows.

"_Twelve steps left. You're doing fine._"

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, big bad wolf, big bad wolf, big bad stairs?"

"_Eleven steps left._"

"Big bad big bad big bad big fucking _bad_ …"

"_Ten steps left._"

She felt an icy breeze on her neck. "_**No, not a breeze** … Ten steps left. **She's right there. She's standing right behind me.**__Ten steps left. Take it **She's going to push me** easy. **down the stairs** Right foot first, then **She's going to kill me **the left one. Just **why won't she leave me alone I hate her **relax._"

The cold air kept brushing over her neck in the slow, monotonous rhythm of a calm breathing. Shelley's fingers tightened around the banister. She stood motionless and listened to the silence. "_There's no one behind you. It's **mom **just your imagination, Shelley. Now take another step, and you'll **she'll push me **only have nine steps left._"

"Mom?" Shelley spoke out loud. Tears stung at her eyes. "Are you there? … I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't done that to you. It was horrible and stupid … Please forgive me."

Silence.

Cold fingertips touching her back, followed by two palms, pressing against the fabric of her sweater, pushing her down …

"Why won't you go _AWAY!" _Shelley spun around and let go of the banister. For a second, her fear of falling vanished and was replaced by pure hatred.

But the object of her hatred was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a little girl sat on the fifth step, her head resting in her hands and her elbows supported on her knees. The red colour of her hair and those blue eyes were unmistakeable.

"Hi," Shelley said to herself.

The little girl stared at her with a bored, vaguely curious look on her face. "Hi. Do you think I'll grow up pretty someday?"

The woman hesitated a little before nodding. "Yeah. I think you'll be the prettiest girl in the world." And with that, Shelley turned around and walked down the remaining ten steps.

* * *

The hair broke the surface first. It floated up like a thick, brown liquid. The top of a head soon emerged underneath the wet strands. The forehead slowly rose from the surface, more brown hair clinging to the pale skin on either side of the bright grey eyes. The nose appeared, followed by bluish lips. The face was completely devoid of any feelings, as if the girl's mind had turned as numb as her body. Even though her eyes were opened wide, unblinking, they seemed to express nothing but cold emptiness. Death.

Louise opened her mouth. After a few hesitant seconds, she finally managed to stutter out her sister's name: "Sharon?"

The girl in the water floated motionless. Her lips parted, but no reply would come. Instead, blood floated from her mouth and created a red cloud in the middle of the lake surface's dark blue sky. The cloud slowly grew and spread through the water, until the entire surface had turned crimson.

Beth doubted that so much blood could have flowed from any human body, let alone a little child. "_What the hell could be down there?_"

The moment the thought had flashed through her mind, a titanic shadow rose to the surface and crashed its wings against the ice. Cracks had invaded the fragile surface in the blink of an eye. The ice broke into countless floes, bursting up like pieces torn out of a puzzle. And from the water below, an enormous shape emerged - a sight of pure depravity, filling Beth with more dread and disgust than any of Silent Hill's other horrors.

Philip looked up, ran his eyes over the creature and smiled at his complete triumph.

"God has returned to us."

_

* * *

_

At the bottom of the staircase, Shelley opened the door and stepped into a dim, square room. The floor and ceiling consisted of even more obese flesh, contours of huge, embedded organs pulsating all around her. The wall with the door was made of old-looking wood, while filthy glass panes seemed to constitute the other three walls.

Shelley approached the centre of the room, and the panes revealed themselves as mirrors. Since two of these were facing each other, a surreal sight of countless mirror images was spawned. But instead of mirroring Shelley, the glass showed infinite copies of a different being – the Devourer. It mimicked her every movement like an imitator, its body a scornful travesty of the real Shelley.

The woman stopped in the middle of the room, and the monster followed suit with unsettlingly quick reactions. Shelley turned around to view the entire room. The infinite rows of Devourers pivoted as well. Their legs had grown together down to the knees, but the creatures could easily walk with their mere shins. The eyelids were still stuck shut under the layer of greasy liquids that smothered their obese bodies.

"… _the prettiest girl in the world._"

Shelley stood motionless for a few seconds, clutching the iron bar she had picked up in the hospital. "_Who's afraid of the big bad wolf_?"

"Not me."

She raised the weapon and ran up to the left wall, smashing the rusty metal into the glass. Cobweb-patterns of cracks burst forth in the mirror. Shelley drew back the bar and swung again, creating more cobwebs, again, crushing that hideous image reflected in the glass, again …

The wall finally shattered. Fragments flew outwards and disappeared in the inky darkness on the other side. Shelley stood at the edge of the room, catching her breath while gazing into the abyss outside.

But her work was not done yet.

She turned around and made a beeline for the second wall, in which only one Devourer was left after the destruction of the opposite mirror. The creature soon disintegrated into countless falling slivers of glass, as Shelley let her frustration guide her hands, smashing the mirror until nothing but the darkness beyond remained.

"Seven years of bad luck, Shelley."

The woman spun around to face the wall opposite the door to the staircase. One Devourer still stood reflected in the third and last mirror. It had spoken with a horribly familiar voice.

"Seven years of bad luck," Shelley's mother repeated. "That's what you get for breaking mirrors."

"I've already had my share of bad luck." Shelley approached the mirror. The Devourer stood motionless, tired of mimicking its victim.

"You think bad luck is what brought you here?"

"No." Shelley shook her head. "_I_ brought myself here. I thought I needed punishment."

"What you _need_ is a diet. Look at you! All that fatty food is …"

Shelley closed her eyes and raised a hand in weary protest. "Stop it. You might as well give up."

Silence reigned for a few seconds. The Devourer's head lolled back, stretching the gill-like slits in its throat. "I suppose this had to happen sooner or later," the mother informed her daughter.

The latter nodded.

"Get it over with."

Shelley raised the iron bar and swung it into the mirror. As the shattered glass fell to the ground, the woman saw the real Devourer standing in the middle of the tunnel on the other side. Little more than skin and bones constituted the creature's body. The ribs were in clear relief under the taut skin of its chest, and the stomach was sickeningly enervated. The arms looked frail enough to be snapped like mere twigs. It stared at Shelley with pitiful, bloodshot eyes, then collapsed in a heap.

Shelley contemplated the gasping, powerless figure for a few seconds.

"_Do you think I'll grow up pretty someday?"_

She stepped over its writhing torso and ran down the tunnel. The walls themselves were starting to look enervated – bones protruding, blood trickling from punctured veins, organs pumping to slower and more irregular beats than before.

* * *

A/N: You might want to get your favorite boss-fight track ready before reading the next chapter … 


	24. The Crimson One

Chapter 24: The Crimson One

_Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder._

-Matthew 19:6

Beth could not even begin to imagine that the being before her was actually God. If anything, it seemed like the Devil incarnate. The lean torso and muscular legs rose from the waters like a travesty of a mermaid, an apron of scaly skin wrapped around the body. Enormous wings unfolded, even larger than those of the Harpies, and curved blades hung from the tips of both wings, reminiscent of the Reaper's scythes.

The head was a mass of horns, strange appendages and long, razorsharp teeth, all wrapped under a layer of glistening, reddish skin. It stretched up from a ridicolously thin throat, which seemed to consist of nothing more than bones. It was hard to comprehend how this thing could still be alive, and nigh impossible to discern any facial features, save for two black eyes between the upper horns.

The most disgusting part, however, was the figure strapped onto the unholy God's torso like an infant carried by its mother. The little girl's hair still floated over her head as if underwater. Her outstretched arms and joined legs were bound by black ropes across the wings and legs of the God. It did not take a Christian priest to notice the similarities between Sharon's position and the most well-known crucifixion of all time.

Beth raised her shotgun with shaking hands and trained it on the God's head. If that thing moved one inch towards her …

Philip simply kept smiling. "From the depths of Her sleep, She has returned to us."

Louise spun around and glared at the priest. "You told me Sharon would come back," she said, her voice seething with frustration.

"And she has come back." Philip gestured to the God towering above them. "God has brought her back to you."

"But it wasn't supposed to happen like this!" Louise refused to look back at the abomination. "You lied to me. You said God would take care of us … Well, that is no God."

The smile vanished from Philip's face, and he frowned at the heretical girl.

"That … That's a _monster_," Louise said.

Philip instantly reared back his fist and smashed it into Louise's face. She stumbled back a few metres and landed on the cold, unforgiving ice.

"Traitor!" the priest hissed and walked up to the fallen girl. "You disappoint me, Louise. After everything I did to help you and your sister, you disappoint me. Even as God stands before your eyes, you deny your faith! Foolish, ungrateful _traitor!_" He delivered a hard kick to her ribs.

Louise cried out and rolled onto her side. She accidentally pressed her injured left palm against the ice, intensifying the pain. Warm blood and tears of anger trickled over her face. Philip was just like the rest of those stupid, uncaring creeps. She should never have trusted him …

Beth watched the events unfold with a blend of horror, anger and pity whirling through her mind. She wanted to help Louise, but the invisible barrier was probably still in the way. Besides, she couldn't risk taking a single step closer to the God.

Her thoughts were distracted as the door to her left burst open. Dean rushed out, heading for the middle of the ice, a scalpel clutched in his hand and cold determination in his eyes.

Louise smiled. She could lift the barrier as easily as she had created it, and there was no doubt in her mind as to what Dean had come here to accomplish.

Beth opened her mouth to tell Dean about the barrier before he smacked into it, but she remained silent, as the man continued across the ice without even stumbling.

Philip frowned at the relieved look on the heretic's face. "What are-"

The sentence was left unfinished there, as Dean ran up behind Philip, raised the scalpel and slit the priest's throat across the Adam's apple – just like Doctor had taught him. Philip never even saw his murderer. With a choked rattle, he collapsed in a pool of warm, red blood on the once so cold, colourless ice.

Dean stood above the corpse and panted for breath. The mental patient strained his ears, but no further orders came from Lord. He turned around and scanned the area. Lord was nowhere to be seen, and both Doctor and Mister had vanished in the hospital room. Dean felt relieved and immensely horrified at the same time. He was free …

Louise scrambled to her feet.

Philip's blood trickled over the edge of the ice and dripped into the lake.

As if awakened from apathetic contemplation, the God rose to its full, majestic height and stretched its wings out until the blades at their tips scraped over the circular wall. Sharon opened her mouth wide, head lolling back against the God's chest, and let out a scream of agony. It sounded more like a metallic cacophony than a human voice, however. Beth recognized it as the noise of tires spinning over a road – a vehicle skidding out of control …

The huge wheel that constituted the ceiling began spinning around at a ludicrous speed. The spokes cast blurred, whirring shadows across the ice. The rusty noise merged with Sharon's scream, and the cacophony was worse than anything else Beth had heard in this world.

Without further warnings, the God swung its right wing down. Dean simply stood petrified and watched the scythe-like blade's descent.

"… _maybe I'll get to see _her _again._"

He had accomplished what Lord wanted – revenge for _her_ death. Doctor and Mister had left him alone. What else was left for him in the world of dull reality? His old life in the hospital, the psychiatrists asking him the same questions over and over, giving him the same drugs that never cured him. Was that really worth fighting for?

"NO!" Beth screamed as the blade swept through Dean's chest, leaving a deep gash in its crimson wake. The man slumped to his knees and dropped the scalpel. The surgical instrument clattered onto the ice, but the sound was drowned out by Sharon's metallic screech. Dean collapsed forwards. His corpse disappeared into the red waters of Hooper Lake.

Beth's finger had been resting on the trigger for minutes, and now, she finally fired the shotgun. Bullets plunged into the wall and bounced off in all directions from the spinning ceiling. A few shots hit their target, though. The God reeled for a moment, while Sharon screamed even louder.

Angered by this attack, the God swung its wings down to crush Louise. Shrieking, the girl ducked and ran away from the creature. The blades caught Philip's corpse, lifted him from the ice and sent him flying up into the enormous wheel. With a sickening crunch, the body was mutilated between the whirring spokes. A grotesque rain of organs and limbs was flung down all over the ice.

Trying to ignore the blood spraying over her, Beth focused on aiming and firing at the God. This was difficult, as her hands were shaking, her eyes blurred by tears and her mind brimming with panic.

The monstrosity lumbered across the lake, flokes of ice bursting aside in front of its legs. It appeared slightly weakened and slowed down by the bullets, but clearly not injured. A few horns were ripped off its head, as Beth tried to train her shotgun on the being's travesty of a face. The black eyes glared at the woman, unblinking since they had nothing that could even resemble lids.

Louise walked backwards until her back pressed against the cold, thick wall. Realising that escape had become an impossibility, she slumped to a sitting position and buried her face in her hands.

'_Now my charms are all o'erthrown,_

_And what strength I have's mine own;_

_Which is most faint.'_

The attempt to resurrect Sharon had been a hideous failure. The girl had been reduced to a screaming corpse, strapped onto the chest of a demon. Philip had deceived Louise. She had thought of him as her Ariel, but he was truly Caliban. Now, she had to experience the consequences of trusting him. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than a release from the pain.

The God granted her wish.

As the creature swung its right wing down, the blade sailed horizontally through the girl's skull. Louise sat limp, no longer feeling the coldness of the ice below her. A brown-haired scalp flew from her head and sank into the lake.

The God then turned its undivided attention to Beth.

Within seconds, it had reached its third victim and was raising both wings for another lethal attack. The crucified Sharon still continued her scream, sounding anything but human.

Beth fired again. At such close range, it was nigh impossible to miss the target, and the bullets plunged into the creature's thigh. Finally showing a sign of weakness, the God fell onto the ice to support its weight on the tips of its wings. As the being's face reached Beth's eye level, the woman was astonished by the complexity in its bizarre features. A cornucopia of horns and tongues all jutted out towards her.

Beth squeezed the trigger, only to be rewarded with a quiet click. Out of ammo. She searched through her pockets, but no more boxes of shotgun shells were left. "No, this isn't happening, this isn't fucking _happening_ …"

The creature tilted its head slightly, as if intrigued by the sound of a human voice. Its triangular, pitchblack eyes seemed to bore into Beth's mind. The God was not pleased with what it saw there.

Somewhere in the nearby wall, a door burst open.

The monstrosity raised its right wing. Moonlight and shadows of the wheel's spokes raced over the surface of the razorsharp blade …

Beth closed her eyes, giving up.

With a sickening splatter of blood and jelly-like, black lumps, an iron bar plunged through the God's head and crushed its right eye. Sharon's scream now sounded completely metallic, a screech of rubber against icy asphalt. The God reared like a panicky horse and rose to its full height. Its head slipped in between the spokes of the huge wheel, where it was instantly mangled and reduced to an explosion of blood, bones, tainted flesh and horn fragments. The rest of the God's body whirled around for a second before falling to the ice, dead.

Beth looked down at her saviour. Shelley stood motionless, still clutching the blood-smeared bar.

Beth broke the silence. "Thank you."

Shelley just stared at the fallen carcass of the God. The ice was starting to crack under the creature's weight. "What the fuck is that thing?"

Beth couldn't offer any explanation.

Louise started crawling across the ice on her hands and knees. Her brain was visible as a pink-greyish mass, arching over the top of her head. She soon reached the spot where Dean had fallen. His scalpel lay on the edge of the ice. The girl picked up the surgical instrument and crawled onwards to the God's torso.

Sharon was still bound to the creature in a travesty of crucifixion. Her scream had trailed off to silence, her mouth closed. Louise started working on the ropes, severing them one by one. First the ones that had been wrapped tight around Sharon's wrists, then the ones binding her legs. The silvery blade easily cut through the black ropes, and Sharon fell to the ice, landing on her stomach. Louise gently turned her around and cradled her head in one hand, holding her shoulder in the other.

Sharon's bluish lips quivered. A rasping whisper emerged: "Louise?"

"It's me, Sharon. I brought you back."

"Is it o-ov-over?" The girl shivered and coughed violently. Filthy lake water trickled from her mouth.

Louise nodded. It was all over.

"_Remember back when we were all living together there, and everything was okay? Why did that have to change?"_

The corner of Sharon's mouth twitched slightly upwards in a weak attempt to smile.

Louise pulled out the photo from her pocket and showed it to her sister. In the photo's blurred image, both girls were sitting on the swings in their old backyard on a sunny day. In the photo, both girls were alive, smiling.

"_Why did that have to change?"_

Louise let go of the photo, as the crumpled surface began to widen. The colours grew sharper and brighter. The images of Louise and Sharon vanished, leaving the backyard deserted. Sunlight shone out from the picture and illuminated the night. The sounds of that day could be heard – a dog barking from afar, the neighbour's sprinkler system, a few cars out on the street. The photo had simply turned real. It grew to the size of a doorway, a few feet before Louise's unblinking eyes.

"Sharon, we have to go now."

She took her sister's hand and helped her up. The sunlight filled both with a warmth that they had not felt for years. The girls stepped forwards, Louise leading the way, across the threshold, into the world beyond the photo.

"_And no one's going to take her away?"_

"_No one."_

* * *

Perceptions differ – especially in the realm of Silent Hill. Why neither Beth nor Shelley saw these last moments of the Barkin sisters' lives, one can only guess. If we were to follow the events through their eyes, we would simply see Louise lie dead, her scalp missing, while Sharon's corpse was still strapped onto the defeated God.

And as the creature fell headless from its encounter with the spinning wheel, it landed on the frozen lake, where the ice finally gave. Cracks spread through the white surface with lightning speed. The ice uttered one last groan, then disintegrated completely.

Beth and Shelley fell into the warm, blood-coloured waters. Both women were pulled down by currents, sinking into the depths.

The waters filled Beth's vision. She could see nothing more than one colour. One colour flooding and devouring everything else.

Crimson.

* * *

'_Our revels now are ended. These our actors,_

_As I foretold you, were all spirits, and_

_Are melted into air; into thin air.'_

* * *

A/N: No, that's not the ending. Click the nice shiny button down there for an epilogue of sorts … And there's links for sketches of the God in my profile. 


	25. Awake

Chapter 25: Awake

Eyes fluttering open, Beth saw a white ceiling above her. Fluorescent lighting. Grey linoleum floor. Warm, comfy bed.

Bedridden.

Beth gasped, ripped back the sheet and jumped out from the bed. As she landed bare-footed on the floor, a dull pain throbbed in her left hip. She ignored this and limped away from the bed as fast as possible. Two armchairs were situated in the corner farthest from the bed. Beth half sat down, half collapsed on the unoccupied one. She scanned the room for some kind of weapon, waiting for the Bedridden creature to emerge.

It never did.

"You're awake?" the nurse in the chair to her right asked. She had apparently fallen asleep herself while reading a magazine, which now lay closed in her lap. The noise when Beth escaped from the imaginary monster had awoken her, though.

"Yeah," Beth said. The shock of remembering the Bedridden had faded away, and a deep feeling of embarrassment pervaded her thoughts. How could she have been so stupid? The Bedridden, the Nymphs, Caliban, Reapers, God … It had all been ridicolous figments of one big nightmare.

The nurse frowned. "Why did you just run off from your bed? Had a bad dream?"

Beth nodded.

"Well, don't you wanna know what happened to you, Miss … Kalember, right?"

Beth nodded. "I was hit by a taxi?"

"We don't know what kind of car it was," the nurse answered. "Some passers-by just found your body lying on the middle of the road. They called an ambulance, and we patched you up. Your left hip may be a bit sore right now, but it should wear off in a few days."

Beth ran her eyes over the room. The windows gave a view of Hooper Lake City's dull afternoon streets. A few cards on the bedside table ordered her to get 'well' and 'better' soon. "How long have I been here?"

"You were brought in on January 9th, so that's about one and a half weeks ago," the nurse said. "Today's Wednesday the 19th."

A few moments of odd silence passed. The nurse was about to start reading her magazine again, when Beth asked: "Do you have a patient named Dean? Dean Frost."

The nurse dropped her magazine, eyes widening. "How do you know about him?"

Beth sighed. "It's a long story. Is he a patient here?"

"He _was_," the nurse said. "Died in his sleep last week. No one can figure out why. He seemed quite healthy – physically speaking, that is. He was in the mental wing. MPD case."

"MPD?"

"Multiple Personality Disorder. Anyway, the whole hospital's completely puzzled as to why he passed away. It doesn't make sense … Just like that other mental patient, Carter Linch Bandfield."

Beth remembered the Caliban creature she had killed. Her face turned pale at the memory. "What about Shelley? Do you have an anorexic patient named Shelley?"

The nurse hesitated. "Are you a relative of hers? We're not supposed to give information about …"

"Look, I just want to know if she's alive," Beth interrupted, glaring hard at the nurse. "Is that too much _information_ to give?"

"Fine," the nurse said. "Yes, she's alive." She smiled at the memory of her anorexic patient, who had been showing glimpses of progress during their last few counselling sessions.

The nurse glanced at her watch. "Damn, I have a meeting in five minutes. If you need anything, just push the call button." With that, the nurse stood and left the patient alone in the room.

Beth listened to the footsteps as they trailed off down the hallway. She then rose from her chair and limped back up to the bed. The mattress felt soft, warm, perfectly comfortable. Why would a monster be lurking inside it? Why would there be monsters lurking anywhere in this world? The ice was thick and safe.

"Just a dream," Beth assured herself, laying on her side, staring out the window at the grey sky. "All just a bad dream."

* * *

Beth's recovery went by quickly. The next day, she was up and walking with no pains in her hip, and on Friday, she was allowed to leave.

Beth pulled the door open and stepped out from the hospital lobby. Twilight and a few street lamps lit the crowded parking lot. She remembered using this exit before, but back then, three companions had followed her.

"_We're … we're really back, aren't we?" Kyle grinned. "We're really back!"_

As Beth walked across the parking lot, she glanced over her shoulder at the hospital entrance. Just like in her dream, the sign above the doors proclaimed: '**LAMBERT HOSPITAL – Proud to aid the people of Hooper Lake City since 1910**.'

Quick, purposeful footsteps sank into the carpet of snow covering the sidewalk. Beth was heading for the city's only church.

By the time Beth had reached the cemetary, it was completely deserted. The dusk had slipped unnoticed into the darkness of a winter night, devoid of stars. Street lamps cast a faint, yellow shade over the rows of gravestones.

Beth walked across the yard and scanned the epitaphs. Spotting the right inscriptions, she kneeled before two particular headstones. Fresh-looking bouquets adorned both.

**Louise Barkin (1991-2005)**

**Sharon Barkin (1996-2005)**

**The Good Lord Will Take Care Of You**

Beth sat there and stared at the graves for minutes. She simply forgot the wind biting at her face, her fingers turning numb, the icy soil colouring her trouser legs black. Thoughts and feelings whirled through her mind like a blizzard, each snowflake slightly different from all the others.

Warm fur brushed against her leg, and she looked down at a familiar grey cat. The animal stared up at her with those bright green eyes, as if imploring to be given a warm, loving home.

Beth scanned the cemetary to make sure that no one was around to hear her. She then glared back at the cat. "Leave me alone," she hissed. "I don't want to see you again. Ever."

The animal stood motionless.

Beth raised her voice. "Go away! Go!"

The cat finally darted off. Within seconds, it had disappeared in the shadowy maze of gravestones.

* * *

The walk to Hooper Lakeshore Apartments took ten minutes. As Beth walked up to her block, she noticed her Honda in the parking lot. The grey vehicle did not even bear the slightest scratch.

_The Reapers landed on the Honda's hood with a cacophonic screech of metal grinding against metal. _

Beth entered the apartment building and walked up the narrow staircase.

_Shelley paused, shivering. "I c-can't go up there," she declared._

In the third floor corridor, Beth produced the key from her wallet and unlocked door 102. Thick layers of dust and a few cobwebs had invaded the flat while its comatose owner lay in the hospital. The potted plants were starting to wither, brown spots appearing on the green leaves. Beth obviously had some cleaning up to do, but most of it could wait till morning.

Closing the door behind her, she walked across the flat and scanned the bookcase. '_The collected works of Sir William Shakespeare, Volume VI_' was still there. Beth grabbed the book and walked out to the kitchen. The waste bin was almost full.

Before dropping the Shakespeare collection in the garbage, Beth opened it on The Tempest. Prospero spoke a soliloquy, and she read it through twice.

'_These our actors,_

_As I foretold you, were all spirits, and_

_Are melted into air, into thin air:_

_And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,_

_The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,_

_The solemn temples, the great globe itself,_

_Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,_

_And like the insubstantial pageant faded,_

_Leave not a rack behind._'

Beth closed the book and watched it fall into the heap of garbage. She walked back through the flat and entered the dim, narrow bedroom, where she instantly collapsed on the bed.

Kyle, Philip, Dean, Sharon, Louise, Shelley … Beth wanted to forget them all, but the memories would never leave her alone.

As she curled up on the bed, she remembered every little element that had led to the events of her nightmare. A cult brainwashing orphans and murdering those who barred its path. A priest using drugs to maintain his own faith. Two innocent souls killed in a horrible car accident. Victimization. Anorexia. Schizophrenia. Murder.

A question suddenly dawned upon Beth, and she did not want to know the answer.

In many ways, wasn't the real world far worse than any of Silent Hill's horrors?

'_We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep._'

When the tears trickled down onto the pillow, she was not even sure whether they were caused by relief, anger or despair. It didn't matter. Beth simply let her mind drift off into sleep.

Sweet, dreamless sleep.

* * *

A/N: The END.

This has been my longest story so far, and IMO the best one. I'm really satisfied with how it all turned out. But anyway, I'm not supposed to review my own stuff. (waits in suspense for the reviews)

And here's a list of the obligatory Geeky References in the fic …

Elizabeth Kalember (Beth): Named after the actresses Elizabeth Pena and Patricia Kalember, who played Jacob's girlfriend and his ex-wife in the classic horror film "Jacob's Ladder".

Kyle Coppola: The taxi driver in Jacob's Ladder was played by Sam Coppola. In fact, the dialogue between Louise and Kyle in chapter 17 was completely ripped out of JL …

Philip Blackmer: In the superbly chilling "Rosemary's Baby" film, Rosemary's cult-leading neighbour was played by Sidney Blackmer. Philip's first name is random, though.

Lambert Hospital: Named after the director of "Pet Sematary", Mary Lambert.

Hooper Lake City: Also named after a horror film director – Tobe Hooper (the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Poltergeist").

Nymphs, Reapers, Caliban, Harpies and all the quotes from The Tempest: Shakespeare must be spinning in his grave.

To all my readers and reviewers: Thank you for tuning in each week. I couldn't have made it to the end without the encouragement of knowing that someone actually liked this bizarre tale of mine. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be writing next, so if you haven't grown completely weary of my scribblings, keep an eye on my account here and the one at Fictionpress.

Tune in some other time …

E.P.O.


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